Reading through email spam or the classified advertisements in a progressive newspaper, one may find offers for everything from assertiveness training1 to sexual domination hypnosis2 to computer software designed to flash brief messages on the screen with the goal of quitting smoking or losing weight.3 These are just a few of the many household Mind Control products marketed today promising that their simple tricks will allow anyone to be the master of their domain. While the efficacy of these programs is debatable, the science behind them is sound.

The basics of Mind Control are as ancient as mankind itself. Convincing someone to adopt an idea or perform a task is commonplace in every family. As a result, children begin learning skills of persuasion at an early age. Kids may rationalize, peer pressure, beg, bribe, bully, guilt, or resort to any number of other tactics including blackmail and all out violent assault in order to get their way. An increasing number of teens and young adults are starting to hone these skills in order to control family, friends and coworkers.

"Flicking through some of the saner sections of neuro-linguistic programming texts (minus the new age content) brings up the subtle use of language and body-language to influence other people," states United Kingdom Defense Contractor "Mom" in personal correspondence. One method of this technique is through "mirroring" 4 the actions and words of the other person, which Mom explains:

Mirroring fosters a sense of ease or trust. Courting couples tend to do this intuitively (watch dating couples and see how they mirror things like sipping coffee, taking a bite of food, etc.) but it can be used as a way of making the mirrored party susceptible to persuasion. By doing the opposite to mirroring, the other party can be made ill-at-ease and be less amenable to persuasion (basically it rubs them up the wrong way).

Mom points out entertainer Derren Brown5 whose website reveals that he "can seemingly predict and control human behavior. He doesn't claim to be a mind-reader, instead he describes his craft as a mixture of magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship." Brown "primes" his audience members using subtle clues to respond in predetermined ways. The effect is dramatic.

Mom also notes a Mind Control game that primes players based upon their personality: conformists will end up visualizing one image (e.g., an elephant in Denmark) while nonconformists will see another (e.g., an emu in Dubai). This phenomenon may be found in simpler form per a circulating email that has the reader calculate the number six several times then asks for a vegetable. It claims 98% of readers will choose carrot.

The human mind is like a computer no matter how efficient it may be. It's reliability is only as great as the information fed into it. If it is possible to control the input of the human mind, then no matter how intelligent a person may be, it's entirely possible to program what he will think; and yes, it's even possible to program people to laugh at the mere mention of the word "conspiracy." 6, i

Notes

i A conspiracy may be a continuing one; actors may drop out and others may drop in; the details of operation may change from time to time; the members need not know each other or the part played by others; a member may not need to know all the details of the plan of the operation; he must, however, know the purpose of the conspiracy and agree to become a party to a plan to effectuate that purpose.
– cited from the Californiia Court of Appeals decision, Craig v. U.S. C.C.A. Cal. 81 F2d 816, 822.

Information Control is Mind Control

In a 12 November 1816 letter to George Logan, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I hope we shall take warning from the example [England] and crush in it's [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country." 1 By December 2000, of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 51 were corporations and 49 were countries, according to information compiled by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies in their Report on the Top 200 corporations as reported by the Corporations.org website.2

Source: Media Reform Information Center

According to the Media Reform Information Center:

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote "in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media" – controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world's largest media corporation.3

In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations – Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) – now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth.

As former intelligence insider Mark Phillips notes, "Information control is mind control." Phillips with Cathy O'Brien co-authored Trance: Formation of America in 1995 submitted for Congressional Record and Access Denied: for Reasons of National Security in 2004 about Mind Control slavery in America.

"The Old Gray Man of the CIA," William "Bill" Colby, known for exposing The Company's "family jewels" from his tenure as Director in the 1970s – abruptly replaced by George H.W. Bush – to Colby's suspicious disappearance and death in late April 1996, let us know that "the Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." 4

It's a sobering fact that the hidden power structure of international finance has exherted tremendous influence over public opinion in this country through its virtual control of higher education and major segments of mass communications.5

As the website MindControlInAmerica.com notes:

Source: Mind Control in America: Exposing the Strategy to Manipulate Your Mind

Under the right circumstances, people can be led to believe things that are not true. On October 30, 1938, thousands of people fled from a crisis that had no existence except in their imaginations. A radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" led thousands of listeners to believe that the planet earth had been invaded by Martians! "We are ready to believe almost anything if it comes from a recognized authority," writes Howard Koch in his book, The Panic Broadcast. Koch wrote the radio script performed by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater on CBS.6

Related books

Obedience to Authority

During the 1970s, neobehaviorists performed countless experiments on adults and children alike. Colleges jumped at the opportunity to test new theories.

In 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrated that normal people can easily turn into sadistic "guards" while reducing their "prisoners" to blind obedience. Scheduled to run two weeks, the study was halted on day six due to ethical concerns. According to Stanford News:

The arrestees were among about 70 young men, mostly college students eager to earn $15 a day for two weeks, who volunteered as subjects for an experiment on prison life that had been advertised in the Palo Alto Times. After interviews and a battery of psychological tests, the two dozen judged to be the most normal, average and healthy were selected to participate, assigned randomly either to be guards or prisoners. Those who would be prisoners were booked at a real jail, then blindfolded and driven to campus where they were led into a makeshift prison in the basement of Jordan Hall.

Those assigned to be guards were given uniforms and instructed that they were not to use violence but that their job was to maintain control of the prison.

[Psychology Professor Philip] Zimbardo's primary reason for conducting the experiment was to focus on the power of roles, rules, symbols, group identity and situational validation of behavior that generally would repulse ordinary individuals. "I had been conducting research for some years on deindividuation, vandalism and dehumanization that illustrated the ease with which ordinary people could be led to engage in anti-social acts by putting them in situations where they felt anonymous, or they could perceive of others in ways that made them less than human, as enemies or objects," Zimbardo told the Toronto symposium in the summer of 1996.1

According to the Standford Prison Experiment PrisonExp.org website:

There were three types of guards. First, there were tough but fair guards who followed prison rules. Second, there were "good guys" who did little favors for the prisoners and never punished them. And finally, about a third of the guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms of prisoner humiliation. These guards appeared to thoroughly enjoy the power they wielded, yet none of our preliminary personality tests were able to predict this behavior. The only link between personality and prison behavior was a finding that prisoners with a high degree of authoritarianism endured our authoritarian prison environment longer than did other prisoners.2

Prisoners coped with their feelings of frustration and powerlessness in a variety of ways. At first, some prisoners rebelled or fought with the guards. Four prisoners reacted by breaking down emotionally as a way to escape the situation. One prisoner developed a psychosomatic rash over his entire body when he learned that his parole request had been turned down. Others tried to cope by being good prisoners, doing everything the guards wanted them to do. By the end of the study, the prisoners were disintegrated, both as a group and as individuals. There was no longer any group unity; just a bunch of isolated individuals hanging on, much like prisoners of war or hospitalized mental patients. The guards had won total control of the prison, and they commanded the blind obedience of each prisoner.3

[By the fifth night it became apparent the experiment had to be stopped. The experimenters had created] a situation in which prisoners were withdrawing and behaving in pathological ways, and in which some of the guards were behaving sadistically. Even the "good" guards felt helpless to intervene.4

Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D. brought in to conduct interviews with the guards and prisoners, strongly objected when she saw our prisoners being marched on a toilet run, bags over their heads, legs chained together, hands on each other's shoulders. Filled with outrage, she said, "It's terrible what you are doing to these boys!" Out of 50 or more outsiders who had seen our prison, she was the only one who ever questioned its morality. Once she countered the power of the situation, however, it became clear that the study should be ended.5

In 1974, Stanley Milgram published his infamous Obedience to Authority study. He discovered that normal people were willing to inflict excruciating pain on a subject at the behest of an instructor as related by Muskingum University:

People who are doing a job as instructed by an administrative figure are following the instructions of that administrative outlook and not the outlook of a moral code. The feelings of duty and personal emotion are clearly separated. Responsibility shifts in the mind of the subordinate from himself/herself to the authority figure. There is a well defined purpose behind the actions or goals of the authority, and the subordinate is depended upon to help and meet those goals.6

According to a short biograpgy of Milgram compiled by Michael Goret et al:

In most versions of this experiment two individuals would arrive at a testing center simultaneously. Here they would meet an instructer who appeared to be conducting the experiment. This instructor superficially appeared as an authority figure by displaying the necessary crudentials [sic] as a professor such as a white lab coat and clip board. The two "subjects"were then taken to a room where one was strapped in a chair to prevent movement and an electrode was placed on their arm. Next, the other individual who was called the "teacher" was taken to an adjoining room where he/she was instructed to read a list of two word pairs. He/She would then ask the "learner" to read them back. If the "learner" got the answer correct, they would then move on to the next set of words in the series. However, if the answer was wrong the "teacher" was informed by the instructor that they were required to administer shock to the "learner". These shocks first started at 15 volts and increased to 450 volts for each incorrect response. This occured in 15 volt increments. The "teacher" was never cohersed into doing so they were simply told by the instructer that the experiement required them to continue. This in fact is what made this study so intiguing; the "teacher" could have discontinued the experiment at any time but you will soon see that the majority continued to shock. The "teacher" was fully under the assumption that he/she was administering discipline to the "learner" however, they were never really doing so. The "learner" was actually a confederate,a student or actor, who were never actually harmed.

Today the field of psychology would deem this study highly unethical because of the great deal of stress layed upon the subjects, however it is quite evident that this research yielded some extremely important findings. The theory that only the most severe monsters on the sadistic fringe of society would submit to such cruelty is disclaimed. Findings indicated that, "two-thirds of this studies participants fell into the category of 'obedient' subjects. These participants represented ordinary people drawn from the working, managerial, and professional classes" (Obedience to Authority). Ultimately 65% of all of the "teachers" punished the "learners" to the maximum 450 volts.7

From its application in the classroom to its use in the workplace, psychology has become a hot topic. The discipline is even finding its way into homes. Today's television programs like "Nanny 911" and "Supernanny" demonstrate what the power of a little Mind Control can do. The children on these shows would surely be required by schools to take a "chemical straightjacket" 8 such as Ritalin, but in a week's time the behavior modification programs transform these tiny terrors into little angels.

Cradle-to-Grave

Adopting new behaviors was addressed in 1953 by Howard Becker in "On Becoming a Marihuana User" for the American Journal of Sociology:

That the presence of a given kind of behavior is the result of a sequence of social experiences during which the person acquires a conception of the meaning of the behavior, and perceptions and judgments of objects and situations, all of which make the activity possible and desirable. Thus, the motivation or disposition to engage in the activity is built up in the course of learning to engage in it and does not antedate this learning process. For such a view it is not necessary to identify those "traits" which "cause" the behavior. Instead, the problem becomes one of describing the set of changes in the person's conception of the activity and of the experience it provides him.1

The proficient use of social and psychological cues is crucial to grab an audience's attention amongst the hundreds if not thousands of advertisements the average American is bombarded with every day.2 "Every waking moment of our lives, we swim in an ocean of advertising, all of it telling us the same thing: consume, consume. And then consume some more," writes Morgan Spurlock, the investigator behind the documentary "Super Size Me" in his article "The Truth about McDonald's and Children." The article notes:

Today, corporations spend more than $15bn every year on marketing, advertising and promotions meant to program American children to consume. Why? Because they realize that children not only have more expendable income of their own, but they influence how their parents spend their hard-earned bucks, too – to the tune of more than $600bn a year.

McDonald's and the other fast-food chains make no secret of the fact that kids are their primary targets. "We have living proof of the long-lasting quality of early brand loyalties in the cradle-to-grave marketing at McDonald's, and how well it works," James McNeal, a well-known children's marketing guru and the author of Kids As Customers, has said. "We start taking children in for their first and second birthdays, and on and on, and eventually they have a great deal of preference for that brand. Children can carry that with them through a lifetime." 3

Medial mogul Disney has gone even further by targeting maternity wards at hospitals. "The reps are offering new moms, within hours of giving birth, a free Disney Cuddly Bodysuit for their babies if they sign up for e-mail alerts from DisneyBaby.com," reports NPR:

The idea is to encourage mothers to infuse their infants with brand loyalty as if it is mother's milk. Getting an expectant mom thinking about her family's first theme-park visit while her child was in the womb, an exec told the [The New York Times], would be like hitting "a home run."

The Advertising Educational Foundation already hails infants 1 year and under as "a more informed, influential and compelling audience than ever before." Children as young as 12 months, the foundation adds, can recognize brands and are "strongly influenced" by advertising and marketing. Like that's a good thing.

The truth is, some studies show that children under 8 years old can't distinguish between ads and entertainment. Until then, they don't fully comprehend that advertising is trying to sell them something. That gives marketers an unfair – not to mention predatory – advantage over our kids. No wonder so many other countries have tight restrictions on marketing to children under age 12.4

"Studies over the years have demonstrated that many people, especially young people, unquestioningly accept the reality presented by television," notes the MindControlInAmerica.com website. "Popular culture (movies, television and music) carries messages about how society works and how people should behave." 5

"Brand loyalty is hard to break for some," writes David Butler for the Northern Colorado Beer Examiner. "The beers you started drinking when you were a young adult often become the beverage of choice later in life. For some, it becomes part of their identity." 6

According to the aysymtomatic.net website in their "Brand Addiction" article:

The big corporations aren't worried about brand addiction to brands that aren't their own. For example, Budweiser doesn't care that you are brand-addicted to Miller, even though they have beer that is comparatively identical in its flavor similarity to water. They're just biding their time until they strike the right nerve with their advertising and you suddenly switch brand loyalty. Until then, they have their own brand-addicts that they need not advertise to. It's a big game to them.7

According to a 1990 paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association:

A study examined whether billboard advertising of tobacco and alcohol products is differentially targeted toward White, Black, Asian, and Hispanic neighborhoods. The study suggests that the modeling of social cues can serve to motivate product use, disinhibit behavioral restraints, and reinforce existing habits. Furthermore, the analyses of the content of the billboards revealed that alcohol and cigarette advertisements use social modeling cues such as anticipated rewards, attractive models, and similarity.8, i

Notes

i The magazine Advertising Age cited Ronald McDonald as No 2 on its list of top 10 advertising icons of the 20th century. Who was No 1? It was the Marlboro Man.
– Morgan Spurlock, "The Truth about McDonald's and Children," Independent/UK, 22 May 2005, at CommonDreams.org, http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0522-20.htm (retrieved: 13 May 2011).

Related films

Gaming Addiction

Source: Cracked.com

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) reports that "psychiatrists are concerned about the wellbeing of children who spend so much time with video games that they fail to develop friendships, get appropriate outdoor exercise or suffer in their schoolwork, [but that] the APA does not consider 'video game addiction' to be a mental disorder at this time. If the science warrants it, this proposed disorder will be considered for inclusion in DSM-V, which is due to be published in 2012." 1

The APA has also reported that "players of violent video games have significantly higher feelings of aggression and differences in brain activity during both cognitive motor activity and resting periods. Researchers led by Gregor R. Szycik, Ph.D., with Hannover Medical School in Hannover, Germany, investigated intensive use of first-person shooter games on the brain function of young male adults, particularly looking at both the possible impact of such games on morphological and functional structure of the brain and its relation to processing cognitive tasks." 2

"Every computer game is designed around the same central element: the player. While the hardware and software for games may change, the psychology underlying how players learn and react to the game is a constant," expounds John Hopson in "Behavioral Game Design" for Gamasutra: The Art & Business of Making Games:

The study of the mind has actually come up with quite a few findings that can inform game design, but most of these have been published in scientific journals and other esoteric formats inaccessible to designers. Ironically, many of these discoveries used simple computer games as tools to explore how people learn and act under different conditions. Psychology can offer a framework and a vocabulary for understanding what we are already telling our players.

• Contingencies and Schedules. A contingency is a rule or set of rules governing when rewards are given out. The anecdote about this discovery (as passed to [Hopson] by one of his students) is that one day B. F. Skinner ran low on the small food pellets he gave the rats in his experiments. Rather than risk running out and having to stop work for the day, he began to provide the pellets every tenth time the rats pressed the lever instead of every time. Experimenting with different regimens of reward, he found that they produced markedly different patterns of response. From this was born a new area of psychology, and one that has some strong implications for game design.

• Ratios and Intervals. There are essentially two fundamental sorts of contingencies, ratios and intervals. Ratio schedules provide rewards after a certain number of actions have been completed. Fixed ratio schedules typically produce a very distinct pattern in the participant. First there is a long pause, then a steady burst of activity as fast as possible until a reward is given. Once participants decide to go for the reward, they act as fast as they can to bring the reward quickly.

There are also "variable ratio" schedules, in which a specific number of actions are required, but that number changes every time. Under variable ratio schedules, participants typically respond with a steady flow of activity at a reasonably high rate. While not quite as high a rate as the burst under a fixed ratio schedule, it is more consistent and lacks the pausing that can cause trouble. In general, variable ratio schedules produce the highest overall rates of activity of all the schedules.

On the other side of the coin there are interval schedules. Instead of providing a reward after a certain number of actions, interval schedules provide a reward after a certain amount of time has passed. In a "fixed interval" schedule, the first response after a set period of time produces a reward. Participants usually respond to fixed interval contingencies by pausing for a while after a reward and then gradually responding faster and faster until another reward is given. As in the fixed ratio, there is a pause that can cause problems for a game designer. Unlike the fixed ratio, there is no sharp transition to a high rate of activity. Instead, there is gradual increase as the appropriate time approaches. The pause remains, a period where player motivation is low.

There are also "variable interval" schedules, where the period of time involved changes after each reward. A counterpart to the variable ratio schedules, these also produce a steady, continuous level of activity, although at a slower pace. As in the variable ratio schedule, there is always a reason to be active. The motivation is evenly spread out over time, so there are no low points where the players' attention might wander. The activity is lower than in a variable ratio schedule because the appearance is not dependent on activity.

Experiments have shown that [game designers] are very good at determining which consequences are the results of [their] own actions and which are not. Each contingency is an arrangement of time, activity, and reward, and there are an infinite number of ways these elements can be combined to produce the pattern of activity [designers] want from [their] players.3

"Notice [the] article does not contain the words 'fun' or 'enjoyment.' Instead it's "the pattern of activity you want," observes David Wong in "5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted" for the Cracked.com website:

His theories are based around the work of BF Skinner, who discovered you could control behavior by training subjects with simple stimulus and reward. He invented the "Skinner Box," a cage containing a small animal that, for instance, presses a lever to get food pellets.

It used to be that once they sold us a $50 game, they didn't particularly care how long we played. The big thing was making sure we liked it enough to buy the next one. But the industry is moving toward subscription-based games like MMO's that need the subject to keep playing – and paying – until the sun goes supernova.

Now, there's no way they can create enough exploration or story to keep you playing for thousands of hours, so they had to change the mechanics of the game, so players would instead keep doing the same actions over and over and over, whether they liked it or not. So game developers turned to Skinner's techniques.

Most addiction-based game elements are based on this fact:

Your brain treats items and goods in the video game world as if they are real. Because they are. That's why the highest court in South Korea ruled that virtual goods are to be legally treated the same as real goods. And virtual goods are now a $5 billion industry worldwide.

There's nothing crazy about it. After all, people pay thousands of dollars for diamonds, even though diamonds do nothing but look pretty. A video game suit of armor looks pretty and protects you from video game orcs. In both cases you're paying for an idea.4

Perceived Value

"For many years researchers have investigated customers' response to product pricing," notes KnowThis.com in their "Market Pricing: Psychological Method" article. "Some of the results point to several interesting psychological effects price may have on customers' buying behavior and on their perception of individual products." 1 So-called "odd-even" pricing has become commonplace as a result "based on the belief that certain prices or price ranges are more appealing to buyers," writes the BusinessDictionary.com website.2

"Odd-even" pricing relates to whole number pricing where customers may perceive a significant difference in product price when pricing is slightly below a whole number value. For example, a product priced at (US) $299.95 may be perceived as offering more value than a product priced at $300.00. This effect can also be used to influence potential customers who receive product information from others. Many times a buyer will pass along the price as being lower than it is either because they recall it being lower than the even number or they want to impress others with their success in obtaining a good value. For instance, in our example a buyer who pays $299.95 may tell a friend they paid "a little more than $200" for the product when in fact it was much closer to $300.3

"Originally, this practice was meant to prevent pilfering of cash by forcing a cashier to open the cash-register (to pay change to the customer) and thus register the transaction," notes BusinessDictionary.com in their explanation of odd-even pricing.4

The higher the price the more likely customers are to perceive it has being higher quality compared to a lower priced product. (Although there is point at which customers will begin to question the value of the product if the price is too high.) In fact, the less a customer knows about a product the more likely they are to judge the product as being of higher quality based on only knowing the price. Prestige pricing can also work with odd-even pricing as marketers, looking to present an image of high quality, may choose to price products at even levels (e.g., $10 rather than $9.99).5

"Price lining or product line pricing is [another] method that primarily uses price to create the separation between the different models," further explains KnowThis.com in their "Market Pricing: Price Lining Method" article:

With this approach, even if customers possess little knowledge about a set of products, customers may perceive they are different based on price alone. The key is whether the prices for all products in the group are perceived as representing distinct price points (i.e., enough separation between each). For instance, a marketer may sell a base model, an upgraded model and a deluxe model each at a different price. If the differences in features for each model is not readily apparent to a customer, such as differences that are inside the product and not easily viewed (e.g., difference between laptop computers), then price lining will help the customer recognize that differences do exist as long as the prices are noticeably different.6

Truth in Advertising

In advertising, there is an inherent assumption that an audience will believe the message to be true. As the Bureau of Consumer Protection relates the Federal Trade Commission Act:

Advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive;

Advertisers must have evidence to back up their claims; and

Advertisements cannot be unfair.1

According to Time Magazine's article "Truth in Advertising?" published in 2008, "Commercial companies are bound by restrictions that prevent them from making false claims about their products or those of their competitors. Certainly, corporations test those laws all the time, but they do so at a significant risk." 2 In February 2008, for example, PRWatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy, noted:

In early January, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce began investigating celebrity endorsements in television ads for brand-name drugs. The investigation was sparked by Pfizer's commercials for its best-selling cholesterol drug Lipitor. These direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads feature Dr. Robert Jarvik, a pioneer in the development of the artificial heart. Viewers are not told that Jarvik is not a cardiologist, nor is he licensed to practice medicine. His presentation as a trusted expert, Pfizer presumably hopes, is enough to persuade viewers to ask their doctors for Lipitor by name. And that would help erode the increasing competition from generic alternatives.

While DTC ads seek to change patients' behavior, pharmaceutical companies are more interested in changing doctors' behavior. Drug marketers work hard to persuade doctors to prescribe their branded drug over generics and other competitors, and to change other medical practices that limit company profits.3, i, ii

Political "candidates are not held to the same commercial standard," the Time Magazine's article points out, "and the reason is simple: their statements and advertisements are considered 'political speech,' which falls under the protection of the First Amendment."

But it's not just that candidates are allowed to launch unfounded attacks against their opponents or make false claims about their own records. Broadcasters are actually obligated to run their ads, even those known to be false. Under the Federal Communications Act, a station can have a blanket policy of refusing all ads from all candidates. But they cannot single out and decline to air a particular commercial whose content they know to be a lie.

As candidates know, a far greater percentage of voters hear the original lie in a campaign ad than ever read about the fact-checked version in a local paper or website like Factcheck.org or Politifact.com. And even if voters do hear the refutation of an ad's claims, studies show that may not alter their perceptions created by the original ad. It may well be that the standards for commercial advertising have worked too well, instilling in many viewers the belief that what they hear on television is mostly true. "You hear people say, 'The ads must have some truth to them, or they wouldn't let them on television,' " says Brooks Jackson of Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "Truth in advertising lulls us into a false sense of security." 4

Former United States (U.S.) President George W. Bush's administration was criticized for producing illegal, fake news announcements in order to sell its federal programs. "The US government admitted it paid actors to pose as journalists in video news releases sent to TV stations intending to convey support for new laws about health benefits," reported Guardian News and Media Limited in March 2004. "The government also prepared scripts to be used by news anchors." 5

The Washington Post reported in March 2005 that "Press Secretary Scott McClellan officially confirmed that the White House is blowing off the Government Accountability Office's finding that prepackaged administration video news releases constitute illegal covert propaganda." 6 Explains The New York Times, "United States law contains provisions intended to prevent the domestic dissemination of government propaganda. The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, for example, allows Voice of America to broadcast pro-government news to foreign audiences, but not at home." 7

The Guardian News report futher explains:

"Video news releases" of this sort have been used in the US since the 1980s, but the way they blur the lines between news and advertising troubles many media experts and campaigners. The government defended the videos, which Democrats described as "disturbing". "The use of video news releases is a common, routine practice in government and the private sector," a health department spokesman told the New York Times. Guidelines were subsequently drawn up to label video news releases as such – a category which the regular Osama bin Laden videos now fall.8

Bush campaign digitally altered TV ad (2004)

The Bush regime was also caught duplicating digital images of soldiers in a 2004 television campaign advertisement titled "Whatever It Takes" reports the Museum of Hoaxes:

The ad included a photo of a crowd of soldiers listening to a speech with a child in the foreground waving an American flag. A poster on the liberal Daily Kos weblog soon noticed that the image had evidently been faked since the same faces appeared in different places throughout the crowd. Initially it was suspected that faces had been cloned in order to make the crowd appear larger than it actually was. But the Bush campaign quickly responded to the growing controversy, revealing that the original version of the photo had shown Bush standing at a podium. A video editor had been asked to edit the image in order to focus on the boy in the foreground waving the flag. Instead of cropping the image, the editor had removed the podium by copying portions of the crowd over it.9

Notes

i To maintain a 10% annual growth rate, the [drug] industry's top 50 companies must more than triple their output of novel drugs.
– David Stipp, "The business of genetics," Fortune, 31 March 1997, 135(6), p. 67.

ii A large number of medications are being prescribed to treat childhood disorders. They include tranquilizers, stimulants, and antipsychotic medication.
– David Sue, Derald Sue, and Stanley Sue, Understanding Abnormal Behavior, 4th ed. (Mass: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1994), p. 512.

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Catapult the Propaganda

In "A brief history of Propaganda" at the ChangingMinds.org website they note:

The term 'propaganda' first appeared in 1622 when Pope Gregory XV established the Sacred Congregation for Propagating the Faith. Propaganda was then as now about convincing large numbers of people about the veracity of a given set of ideas. Of course, propaganda is as old as people, politics and religion. People with ideas will always want to persuade others about them and, if they have the power, they will pull every string they have to persuade everyone. Misinformation and disinformation are widely used to distract people from the truth and create new realities.1

According to the world's largest collaboratively-written online encyclopedia Wikipedia:

Propaganda can be classified according to the source and nature of the message. White propaganda generally comes from an openly identified source, and is characterized by gentler methods of persuasion, such as standard public relations techniques and one-sided presentation of an argument. Black propaganda is identified as being from one source, but is in fact from another. This is most commonly to disguise the true origins of the propaganda, be it from an enemy country or from an organization with a negative public image. Grey propaganda is propaganda without any identifiable source or author.2

During a 2005 Social Security conversation in New York, former U.S. President George W. Bush explained how "a personal savings account would be a part of a Social Security retirement system," and those already retired "don't have anything to worry about – third time I've said that. I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." 3

The Rule of Three of which Aristotle wrote in his book Rhetoric "put simply is that people tend to easily remember three things," writes Presentation Magazine. For presentations, the magazine lists four key points:

The audience are likely to remember only three things from your presentation - plan in advance what these will be

There are three parts to your presentation. The beginning, the middle and the end. Start to plan out what you will do in these three parts.

Use lists of three wherever you can in your presentation. Lists of three have been used from early times up to the present day. They are particularly used by politicians and advertisers who know the value of using the rule of three to sell their ideas.

In Presentations "Less is More". If you have four points to get across - cut one out. They won't remember it anyway.

A classic example of the rule of three was Winston Churchill's famous Blood, Sweat and Tears speech. He is widely attributed as saying I can promise you nothing but blood sweat and tears. What he actually said was "I can promise you Blood, Sweat, Toil and Tears". Because of the rule of three we simply remember it as Blood sweat and tears.4

"In 1933, Hitler realized the potential of propaganda and appointed Joseph Goebbels as Minister for Propaganda," continues the ChangingMinds.org synopsis. "Goebbels was remarkably effective and much of the propaganda literature discusses in detail the methods they used." ChangingMinds.org also notes the creation of The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA):

In 1936 Boston merchant Edward Filene helped establish the short-lived Institute for Propaganda Analysis which sought to educate Americans to recognize propaganda techniques. Although it did not last long, they did produce a list of seven propaganda methods that have become something of a standard.

Testimonial: The testimony of an independent person is seen as more trustworthy.

Transfer: Associate the leader with trusted others.5

During World War Two, the U.S. Military utilized propaganda by dropping leaflets on enemy troops depicting, among other things, death and destruction from superior firepower unless they surrender. A detailed history of propaganda leaflets and the Monroe bomb drops of World War Two may be found at the ww2propaganda.eu website:

Captain James Monroe of the USAAF invented a bomb for the spreading of leaflets. The so-called Monroe bomb was taken into service. This bomb consisted of a paperboard cylinder in which up to 80.000 leaflets could fit. These bombs were dropped like normal bombs. A small detonator caused the cylinder to open at any given height. The leaflets were spread over a large area.6

Subliminal Affect

As this author wrote in 1993 for a film class at the University of Washington in Seattle on the topic of Soundscaping (with minor edits):

A filmmaker attempts to reproduce in two dimensions what
is inherent to three-dimensional space. A film space encompasses
everything in, on, and around the camera, governs which frame of film
borders another, and which sounds will fill that space. The space is a combination of diegetic and off screen mise en scène as well as montage effects and sound manipulation. A complete space is both a landscape and a soundscape since both add depth and realism to an otherwise two-dimensional medium.1

Often this involves playing so-called mood music. "Music affects the way we feel," writes Kathleen Northridge for the eHow.com website:

Primitive people knew that rhythm could affect how people felt and they used it to intensify feelings of love, happiness, anger, etc. Scientists at the Universita di Pavia tested the harmonic, melodic and rhythmic structure of music and varied tempos. They found that a faster tempo increased heart rate, breathing rate and blood pressure, among other things.

When [a] mother's heartbeat increases, so does that of the fetus, [and] newborns like nothing better than to be held up near their mother's hearts. The sound of a rhythmic heartbeat calms newborns.2

Colors too affect mood. "People are more likely to lose their tempers in a yellow room," for example, writes freshome: Interior Design & Architecture. "Crimson can make some people feel irritable. Red has been shown to raise blood pressure, speed respiration and heart rate [while] blue brings down blood pressure and slows respiration and heart rate.2

Images are inclusive: the mere act of seeing a handgun such as those depicted on warning signs attached to many school entryways in recent years has been demonstrated to increase violent tendencies. Writes Jennifer Klinesmith, et al, in "Guns, testosterone, and aggression" for Knox College:

Using images and sounds to subconsciously affect viewers' purchasing habits is a powerful tool available to the media giants. While businesses vehemently deny using covert and possibly illegal methods of product presentation, observers have claimed it common practice and appearing in numerous adverts. "Advertising is (an attempt at) pure psychological manipulation. To shun the notion that subliminal studies are implemented is downright ignorant," a thesis idea rejected years ago according to Edward R. Murrow School of Communication graduate "Hitch Hiker" in personal correspondence.

Vance Packard, in his 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders, brought the concept of "subliminal advertising" to the attention of the general public. "Although Packard did not use the term "subliminal advertising," he did describe many of the new "motivational research" marketing techniques being employed to sell products in the burgeoning post-war American market," according to the Snopes.com website. "Advertisements that focused on consumers' hopes, fears, guilt, and sexuality were designed to persuade them to buy products they'd never realized they needed." 5

The oft-cited example is that brief images of "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat popcorn" flashed briefly on the screen during a drive-in theater movie in 1957 increased sales of said products by 18.1 percent and 57.8 percent respectively, according to Wikipedia.5 "However, in 1962 [market researcher James] Vicary admitted to lying about the experiment and falsifying the results, the story itself being a marketing ploy." 6

That aside, subliminals have often found their way into Disney's animated movies. A photograph of a topless woman appeared in "The Rescuers" home video, for example. In "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Jessica Rabbit doesn't appear to be sporting underwear when she twirls, and there is also a questionable scene involving Baby Herman sulking under a woman's petticoats. The original home video cover art for "The Little Mermaid" contained a phallus. And mysterious layering of voices in "Aladdin" says "Good teenagers, take off your clothes." 7

Mischievous or otherwise disgruntled employees are usually to blame for these inclusions to the Disney experience. One example is the claim that letters in the clouds from a scene in "The Lion King" were allegedly inserted by special effects artists to spell out SFX, but they actually appear as SEX to the astute observer.8

The power of visual images became painfully apparent during the 16 December 1997 airing of the "Electric Soldier Porygon" episode of the Japanese children's animated cartoon television series Pokemon. Alternating red and blue flashing colors at a frequency of 12 Hertz were responsible for causing hundreds of children and many adults to suffer photosensitive epileptic seizures. Evening news coverage again triggered the response in susceptible viewers. In its aftermath, a series of guidelines were established to help prevent future recurrences of related phenomena, and many computer games today even carry warnings of the potential risk of seizures.9

Related links

1 Kevin Crosby, "Soundscaping," Presented to The University of Washington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Class of Comparative Literature 357 (Film), Autumn 1993, grade 3.7.

Related books

Behavioral Conditioning

Repetition of stimuli combined with rewards and punishments is the backbone of the behavioral sciences. Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, for instance, demonstrated how dogs could be made to salivate to given a stimulus. "In 1906 Pavlov cut holes in dogs' cheeks and inserted tubes to measure salivation," wrote The Encyclopedia Americana in 1963 as reported by Jim Keith in Mind Control, World Control. "A bell was rung just before food was given to the dogs, and after a period of time it was observed that the ringing of the bell alone would increase the rate of the dogs' salivation." 1Introduction to Psychology (Fifth Edition) by Dennis Coon explains:

The bell in Pavlov's experiment starts out as a neutral stimulus (NS) (a stimulus that does not evoke a response). In time, the bell becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS), that is, a stimulus to which the dog has learned to respond. The meat powder is an unconditioned stimulus (US) (because the dog does not have to learn to respond to it). Unconditioned stimuli typically produce reflex responses. Since a reflex is "built in," it is called an unconditioned (nonlearned) response (UR). In Pavlov's study, salivation is the UR. Whe the bell alone causes salivation, the response can no longer be called a simple reflex. Instead, it is a conditioned (learned) response (CR).2

Source: Encarta

Before Conditioning

Example

US --> UR

meat powder --> salivation

NS --> no effect

bell --> no effect

After Conditioning

CS --> CR

bell --> salivation

"Shortly after Pavlov was driving dogs crazy in Russia, [John Broadus (J.B.) Watson (1878-1958)] at Johns Hopkins University was doing the same thing to humans," Jim Keith continues.3 The Father of Behaviorism, writes Raymond E. Fancher in Pioneers of Pyschology, Watson "believed the main significance of [his] studies lay not in the bare fact that people and dogs could both be conditioned to salivate to or withdraw their toes from inherently neutral stimuli, but in their implications for further and broader conditioning experiments. In particular, he suggested that human emotions might profitably be thought of as glandular and muscular reflexes which, like salivation, easily become conditioned." 4

"Early in his writing, Watson described emotions as instinctive, universal, natural reactions. Whereas he ultimately rejected the notion of instinct as superfluous," writes the Encyclopedia.com website. "He assumed that fear, rage, and love were primary emotional responses and undertook to investigate their modifiability in children." 5

[Little] Albert, eleven months of age, was an infant with phlegmatic disposition, afraid of nothing “under the sun” except a loud sound made by striking a steel bar. This made him cry. By striking the bar at the same time that Albert touched a white rat, the fear transferred to the white rat. After seven combined stimulations, rat and sound, Albert not only became greatly disturbed at the sight of a rat, but this fear had spread to include a white rabbit, cotton, wool, a fur coat, [a dog, a Santa Claus mask (Robert I. Watson, Sr., and Rand B. Evans, The Great Psychologists: A History of Psychological Thought, 5th ed. (New York: HarperCollins Publ., Inc., 1991), p. 483.),] and the experimenter’s hair. It did not transfer to his wooden blocks and other objects very dissimilar to the rat [Mary Cover Jones, "A Laboratory Study of Fear: The Case of Peter," Pedagogical Seminary, 1924, 31, pp. 308-309].6

Reports Ben Harris in "Whatever Happened to Little Albert?":

Unfortunately, most accounts of Watson and Rayner's research with Albert feature as much fabrication and distortion as they do fact. For example, not one text mentions that Watson knew when Albert would leave his control – a detail that might make Watson and Rayner's failure to recondition Albert seem callous to some modern readers.

However, there are other reasons for such errors besides textbooks' tendencies to tell ethically pleasing stories that are consistent with students' common sense. One major source of confusion about the Albert story is Watson himself, who altered and deleted important aspects of the study in his many descriptions of it. For example, in the Scientific Monthly description of the study (Watson, J. B., & Watson, R. R. Studies in infant psychology. Scientific Monthly, 1921, 13, 493­515), there is no mention of the conditioning of Albert to the dog, the rabbit, and the rat; thus Albert's subsequent responses to these stimuli can be mistaken for a strong generalization effect (for which there is little evidence).7

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed and my own specific world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – a doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even into a beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors [JB Watson, "What the nursery has to say about instincts," in Carl Murchison, ed., Psychologies of 1925 (Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1926), p. 19].8

Watson and neurologist Karl Lashley "set out in 1915 to condition humans with a bell (CS) a small electric shock to the foot, (US) and a toe-flexing response," according to lecture notes on John B. Watson at Sonoma State University in California. "The bell and shock occurred simultaneously. The reflex was not fully reliable but some were conditioned. A subject trained in may and retested in October required only one reminding shock for the reflex to reappear. They carried out a number of experiments, and Watson believed that emotions as well as saliva flows and toe movements could be conditioned." 9

Electroshock experiments have also led to electroconvulsive therapy being practiced today to treat symptoms such as severe depression. (The 2004 remake of the 1962 classic film Manchurian Candidate depicts the protagonist undergoing the controversial procedure in order to forget his flashbacks of having been brainwashed.) "The changes one sees when electroshock is administered are completely consistent with any acute brain injury, such as a blow to the head from a hammer," stated psychiatrist Dr. Lee Coleman in 1977 "In essence, what happens is that the individual is dazed, confused, and disoriented, and therefore cannot remember or appreciate current problems." 10

Ping Pong playing pigeons

Author, inventor, and renowned psychologist B.F. Skinner demonstrated how rewards and punishments can be used to "shape" behavior. Shaping involves conditioning the subject in gradual steps toward the desired complex behavior. "Too many people think of me as the person who taught pigeons to play Ping-Pong.," said Skinner. "It turns up in the damnedest places! I did that for a classroom demonstration to prove what you could do with these techniques, to show people the product of shaping behavior. I didn't do it to teach the pigeons to play Ping-Pong. That's not the science!" Then he added, with comic timing, "Although the pigeons did get pretty good at it…angle shots and so on." 11

Pigeon guided bomb

"During World War II, Skinner conducted a series of experiments in which he trained sets of pigeons to navigate bombs dropped from aircraft so they would hit their targets accurately," writes Harvey Mindess in Makers of Psychology: The Personal Factor. "The pigeons were to be harnessed inside the nose cones of the bombs." 12 Greg Goebel reported that "the pigeons were trained with slides of aerial photographs of the target, and if they kept the crosshairs on the target, they were rewarded by a grain deposited in a tray in front of them. Skinner later found that the pigeons were less easily disturbed under confusing circumstances if they were fed hemp (marijuana) seeds rather than grains." 13

As of Yet notes on their Muppet and Other Insanties page on Project Pigeon that, "Skinner's control system used a lens in the nose of the bomb to throw an image of the approaching target on a ground-glass screen. If the target's image moved off center, the pigeon's pecking tilted the screen, which moved the bomb's tail surfaces, which corrected the bomb's course. To improve accuracy, Skinner used three pigeons to control the bomb's direction by majority rule" [Charles Eames and Ray Eames, A Computer Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 131].14 "These birds would have been the equivalent of modern guidance computers," writes Robert I. Watson, Sr., and Rand B. Evans in The Great Psychologists: A History of Psychological Thought.15

"Some responses are easier to learn than others," writes Dennis Coon in Introduction to Psychology:

For example, two noted psychologists, Keller and Marion Breland, went into business training animals for television shows, zoo displays, and amusement parks. Along with their successes came some revealing failures. In one instance, the Brelands tried to condition a raccoon to put coins in a piggy-bank for an advertisement. Instead, the raccoon repeatedly rubbed the coins together in a miserly-looking fashion (Breland, K., & Breland, M. (1961). The misbehavior of organisms. American Psychologist, 16, 681-684). No amount of reinforcement would change this behavior. The Brelands ran into similar snags with other animals. In each case, an innate behavior pattern hindered learning. They called this problem instinctive drift: Learned responses tend to "drift" toward innate ones. In view of such observations, it is wise to remember that the laws of learning operate within a framework of biological limits and possibilities (Adams, J. A. (1980). Learning and memory. Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press).16

Harvey Mindess, in Makers of Psychology, claims "Skinner's first public declamation of the world-saving power of behaviorism is contained in his Utopian novel, Walden Two (1948). A fuller exposition of his views on the future of the human race is put forth in Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971)":

A Utopian novel set in contemporary America, the people at Walden Two have been conditioned to be of service to the community and to carry out their appointed duties without complaint and without question. The resultant peacefulness and efficiency of the place becomes captivation to some of the visitors, but it disturbs others, who continually raise[] the issue of human beings being deprived of their freedom of choice.

The title [Beyond Freedom and Dignity] must be taken literally. Skinner lets us know from the outset that he considers the value placed on our so-called freedom to shape our own lives, as well as the vaunted ideal of the dignity of the individual, to be outmoded notions whose time has past.… He attacks them by insisting that a "technology of behavior" based on the principles of operant conditioning could produce a world as free from crime, unhappiness, and inefficiency as from our unfortunate overestimation of the worth of the individual and our common delusion that there actually is such a thing as freedom of the will.17

Related books

Brainwashing

John Marks writes in Chapter 8 of his 1979 book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control that:

In September 1950, the Miami News published an article by Edward Hunter titled "'Brain-Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party." It was the first printed use in any language of the term "brainwashing," which quickly became a stock phrase in Cold War headlines. Hunter, a CIA propaganda operator who worked under cover as a journalist, turned out a steady stream of books and articles on the subject. He made up his coined word from the Chinese hsi-nao – "to cleanse the mind" – which had no political meaning in Chinese.

Americans were familiar with the idea that the communists had ways to control hapless people, and Hunter's new word helped pull together the unsettling evidence into one sharp fear. The brainwashing controversy intensified during the heavy 1952 fighting in Korea, when the Chinese government launched a propaganda offensive that featured recorded statements by captured U.S. pilots, who "confessed" to a variety of war crimes including the use of germ warfare.

Edward Hunter saw the confessions as proof that the communists now had techniques "to put a man's mind into a fog so that he will mistake what is true for what is untrue, what is right for what is wrong, and come to believe what did not happen actually had happened, until he ultimately becomes a robot for the Communist manipulator."

By the end of the Korean War, 70 percent of the 7,190 U.S. prisoners held in China had either made confessions or signed petitions calling for an end to the American war effort in Asia. Worse, an alarming number of the prisoners stuck by their confessions after returning to the United States. They did not, as expected, recant as soon as they stepped on U.S. soil. Puzzled and dismayed by this wholesale collapse of morale among the POWs, American opinion leaders settled in on Edward Hunter’s explanation: The Chinese had somehow brainwashed our boys.1

"Robert Jay Lifton was one of the early psychologists to study brainwashing and mind control," writes the the ChangingMinds.org website. "He called the method used thought reform." Lifton defined the "brainwashing processes" to include assault on identity, guilt, self-betrayal, breaking point, leniency, the compulsion to confess, the channeling of guilt, reeducation: logical dishonoring, progress and harmony, and final confession and rebirth:

Assault on identity
Aspects of self-identity are systematically attacked. For example the priests were told that they were not real Fathers. This has a serious destabilizing effect as people lose a sense of who they are. Losing the self also leads to weakening of beliefs and values, which are then easier to change.

Guilt
Constant arguments that cast the person as guilty of any kind of wrong-doing leads them to eventually feel shame about most things and even feel that they deserve punishment. This is another piece of the jigsaw puzzle of breakdown.

Self-betrayal
When the person is forced to denounce friends and family, it both destroys their sense of identity and reinforces feelings of guilt. This helps to separates them from their past, building the ground for a new personality to be built.

Breaking point
The constant assault on identity, guilt and self-betrayal eventually leads to them breaking down, much as the manner of the 'nervous breakdown' that people experience for other reasons. They may cry inconsolably, have convulsive fits and fall into deep depression. Psychologically, they may effectively be losing a sense of who they are and hence fearing total annihilation of the self.

Leniency
Just at the point when the person is fearing annihilation of the self, they are offered a small kindness, a brief respite from the assault on their identity, a cigarette or a drink. In those moments of light amongst the darkness, they may well feel a deep sense of gratitude, even though it is their torturer who is offering the 'kindness'. This is another form of Hurt and Rescue, albeit extreme.

The compulsion to confess
Having being pulled back from the edge of breakdown, they are then faced with the contrast of the hurt of potential further identity assault against the rescue of leniency. They may also feel the obligation of exchange in a need to repay the kindness of leniency. There also may be exposed to them the opportunity to assuage themselves of their guilt through confession.

The channeling of guilt
The overwhelming sense of guilty and shame that the person is feeling will be so confused by the multiple accusations and assaults on their identity, that the person will lose the sense of what, specifically, they are guilty of, and just feel the heavy burden of being wrong.

This confusion allows the captors to redirect the guilt towards what ever they please, which will typically be having lived a life of wrong and bad action due to living under an ideology which itself is wrong and bad.

Reeducation: logical dishonoring
The notion that the root cause of their guilt is an externally imposed ideology is a straw at which the confused and exhausted person grasps. If they were taught wrongly, then it is their teachers and the ideology that is more at fault. Thus to assuage their guilt, further confession about all acts under the ideology are brought out. By mentally throwing away these acts (in the act of confession) they also are now completing the act of rejecting the whole ideology.

Progress and harmony
The rejection of the old ideology leaves a vacuum into which the new ideology can be introduced. As the antithesis of the old ideology, it forms a perfect attraction point as the person flees the old in search of a contrasting replacement.

This progress is accelerated as the new ideology is portrayed as harmonious and ideally suited to the person's needs. Collegiality and calm replaces pain and punishment. The captors thus contrast in visible and visceral ways how wonderful the new ideology is as compared to the sins and the pain of the old ideology.

Final confession and rebirth
Faced with the stark contrast of the pain of the past with the rosy glow of the future that the new ideology presents, the person sheds any the final allegiance to the old ideology, confessing any remaining deep secrets, and takes on the full mantle of the new ideology.

This often feels, and has been described by many, as a form of rebirth. It may be accompanied by rites of passage as the person is accepted and cemented into the new order. The rituals will typically include strong statements made by the person about accepting the new ideology fully and completely, swearing allegiance to its leaders. Saluting flags, kissing other artefacts and other symbolic acts, all solemnly performed, all anchor them firmly in the new ground.2

"term for a concept that stands for a form of influence manifested in a deliberately and systematically applied traumatizing and obedience-producing process of ideological resocializations" and states this same concept had historically also been called thought reform and coercive persuasion.3

The website FACTnet.org stresses freedom of thought "because no one has the right to control your mind." F.A.C.T. "uses 'coercive psychological systems' as an umbrella term to include all types of unethical mind control such as brainwashing, thought reform, destructive persuasion and coercive persuasion" and lists tactics that include increasing suggestibility; establishing control over the person's social environment, time and sources of social support; prohibiting disconfirming information; making the person re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self; creating a sense of powerlessness; creating strong aversive emotional arousals; and intimidating the person:

TACTIC 2
Establish control over the person's social environment, time and sources of social support by a system of often-excessive rewards and punishments. Social isolation is promoted. Contact with family and friends is abridged, as is contact with persons who do not share group-approved attitudes. Economic and other dependence on the group is fostered.

TACTIC 3
Prohibit disconfirming information and non supporting opinions in group communication. Rules exist about permissible topics to discuss with outsiders. Communication is highly controlled. An "in-group" language is usually constructed.

TACTIC 4
Make the person re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self and prior conduct in negative ways. Efforts are designed to destabilize and undermine the subject's basic consciousness, reality awareness, world view, emotional control and defense mechanisms. The subject is guided to reinterpret his or her life's history and adopt a new version of causality.

TACTIC 5
Create a sense of powerlessness by subjecting the person to intense and frequent actions and situations which undermine the person's confidence in himself and his judgment.

TACTIC 6
Create strong aversive emotional arousals in the subject by use of nonphysical punishments such as intense humiliation, loss of privilege, social isolation, social status changes, intense guilt, anxiety, manipulation and other techniques.

TACTIC 7
Intimidate the person with the force of group-sanctioned secular psychological threats. For example, it may be suggested or implied that failure to adopt the approved attitude, belief or consequent behavior will lead to severe punishment or dire consequences such as physical or mental illness, the reappearance of a prior physical illness, drug dependence, economic collapse, social failure, divorce, disintegration, failure to find a mate, etc.

These tactics of psychological force are applied to such a severe degree that the individual's capacity to make informed or free choices becomes inhibited. The victims become unable to make the normal, wise or balanced decisions which they most likely or normally would have made, had they not been unknowingly manipulated by these coordinated technical processes. The cumulative effect of these processes can be an even more effective form of undue influence than pain, torture, drugs or the use of physical force and physical and legal threats.4

In 1957, sociologist Albert D. Biderman published "Communist Coercive Methods For Eliciting Individual Compliance" in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. Biderman's Chart of Coercion lists isolation, monopolization of perception, induced debility and exhaustion, occasional indulgences, and devaluing of the individual as methods of brainwashing:

Isolation

Deprives individual of social support, effectively rendering him unable to resist

Makes individual dependent upon interrogator

Develops an intense concern with self

Once a person is away from longstanding emotional support and thus reality checks, it is fairly easy to set a stage for brainwashing. Spiritually abusive groups work to isolate individuals from friends and family, whether directly, by requiring the individuals to forsake friends and family for the sake of the "Kingdom" (group membership), or indirectly, by preaching the necessity to demonstrate one's love for God by "hating" one's father, mother, family, friends.

Abusive groups are not outward-looking, but inward-looking, insisting that members find all comfort and support and a replacement family within the group. Cut off from friends, relatives, previous relationships, abusive groups surround the recruits and hammer rigid ideologies into their consciousnesses, saturating their senses with specific doctrines and requirements of the group.

Isolated from everyone but those within the group, recruits become dependent upon group members and leaders and find it difficult if not impossible to offer resistance to group teachings. They become self-interested and hyper-vigilant, very fearful should they incur the disapproval of the group, which now offers the only support available to them which has group approval.

Warning signs:
The seed of extremism exists wherever a group demands all the free time of a member, insisting he be in church every time the doors are open and calling him to account if he isn't, is critical or disapproving of involvements with friends and family outside the group, encourages secrecy by asking that members not share what they have seen or heard in meetings or about church affairs with outsiders, is openly, publicly, and repeatedly critical of other churches or groups (especially if the group claims to be the only one which speaks for God), is critical when members attend conferences, workshops or services at other churches, checks up on members in any way, i.e., to determine that the reason they gave for missing a meeting was valid, or makes attendance at all church functions mandatory for participating in church ministry or enjoying other benefits of church fellowship.

Once a member stops interacting openly with others, the group's influence is all that matters. He is bombarded with group values and information and there is no one outside the group with whom to share thoughts or who will offer reinforcement or affirmation if the member disagrees with or doubts the values of the group. The process of isolation and the self-doubt it creates allow the group and its leaders to gain power over the members. Leaders may criticize major and minor flaws of members, sometimes publically, or remind them of present or past sins. They may call members names, insult them or ignore them, or practice a combination of ignoring members at some times and receiving them warmly at others, thus maintaining a position of power (i.e., the leaders call the shots.)

The sense of humiliation makes members feel they deserve the poor treatment they are receiving and may cause them to allow themselves to be subjected to any and all indignities out of gratefulness that one as unworthy as they feel is allowed to participate in the group at all. When leaders treat the member well occasionally, they accept any and all crumbs gratefully. Eventually, awareness of how dependent they are on the group and gratitude for the smallest attention contributes to an increasing sense of shame and degradation on the part of the members, who begin to abuse themselves with "litanies of self-blame," i.e., "No matter what they do to me, I deserve it, as sinful and wretched as I am. I deserve no better. I have no rights but to go to hell. I should be grateful for everything I receive, even punishment."

Monopolization of Perception

Fixes attention upon immediate predicament; fosters introspection

Eliminates stimuli competing with those controlled by captor

Frustrates all actions not consistent with compliance

Abusive groups insist on compliance with trival demands related to all facets of life: food, clothing, money, household arrangements, children, conversation. They monitor members' appearances, criticize language and childcare practices. They insist on precise schedules and routines, which may change and be contradictory from day to day or moment to moment, depending on the whims of group leaders.

At first, new members may think these expectations are unreasonable and may dispute them, but later, either because they want to be at peace or because they are afraid, or because everyone else is complying, they attempt to comply. After all, what real difference does it make if a member is not allowed to wear a certain color, or to wear his hair in a certain way, to eat certain foods, or say certain words, to go certain places, watch certain things, or associate with certain individuals. In the overall scheme of things, does it really matter? In fact, in the long run, the member begins to reason, it is probably good to learn these disciplines, and after all, as they have frequently been reminded, they are to submit to spiritual authority as unto the Lord.. Soon it becomes apparent that the demands will be unending, and increasing time and energy are focused on avoiding group disapproval by doing something "wrong." There is a feeling of walking on eggs. Everything becomes important in terms of how the group or its leaders will respond, and members' desires, feelings and ideas become insignificant. Eventually, members may no longer even know what they want, feel or think. The group has so monopolized all of the members' perceptions with trivial demands that members lose their perspective as to the enormity of the situation they are in.

The leaders may also persuade the members that they have the inside track with God and therefore know how everything should be done. When their behavior results in disastrous consequences, as it often does, the members are blamed. Sometimes the leaders may have moments, especially after abusive episodes, when they appear to humble themselves and confess their faults, and the contrast of these moments of vulnerability with their usual pose of being all-powerful endears them to members and gives hope for some open communication.

Threats sometimes accompany all of these methods. Members are told they will be under God's judgment, under a curse, punished, chastised, chastened if they leave the group or disobey group leaders. Sometimes the leaders, themselves, punish the members, and so members can never be sure when leaders will make good on the threats which they say are God's idea. The members begin to focus on what they can do to meet any and all group demands and how to preserve peace in the short run. Abusive groups may remove children from their parents, control all the money in the group, arrange marriages, destroy personal items of members or hide personal items.

Warning signs:
Preoccupation with trivial demands of daily life, demanding strict compliance with standards of appearance, dress codes, what foods are or are not to be eaten and when, schedules, threats of God's wrath if group rules are not obeyed, a feeling of being monitored, watched constantly by those in the group or by leaders. In other words, what the church wants, believes and thinks its members should do becomes everything, and you feel preoccupied with making sure you are meeting the standards. It no longer matters whether you agree that the standards are correct, only that you follow them and thus keep the peace and in the good graces of leaders.

Induced Debility and Exhaustion
People subjected to this type of spiritual abuse become worn out by tension, fear and continual rushing about in an effort to meet group standards. They must often avoid displays of fear, sorrow or rage, since these may result in ridicule or punishment. Rigid ministry demands and requirements that members attend unreasonable numbers of meetings and events makes the exhaustion and ability to resist group pressure even worse.

Warning Signs:
Feelings of being overwhelmed by demands, close to tears, guilty if one says no to a request or goes against a church standards. Being intimidated or pressured into volunteering for church duties and subjected to scorn or ridicule when one does not "volunteer." Being rebuked or reproved when family or work responsibilities intrude on church responsibilities.

Occasional Indulgences

Provides motivation for compliance

Leaders of abusive groups often sense when members are making plans to leave and may suddenly offer some kind of indulgence, perhaps just love or affection, attention where there was none before, a note or a gesture of concern. Hope that the situation in the church will change or self doubt ("Maybe I'm just imagining it's this bad,") then replace fear or despair and the members decide to stay a while longer. Other groups practice sporadic demonstrations of compassion or affection right in the middle of desperate conflict or abusive episodes. This keeps members off guard and doubting their own perceptions of what is happening.

Some of the brainwashing techniques described are extreme, some groups may use them in a disciplined, regular manner while others use them more sporadically. But even mild, occasional use of these techniques is effective in gaining power.

Warning Signs:
Be concerned if you have had an ongoing desire to leave a church or group you believe may be abusive, but find yourself repeatedly drawn back in just at the moment you are ready to leave, by a call, a comment or moment of compassion. These moments, infrequent as they may be, are enough to keep hope in change alive and thus you sacrifice years and years to an abusive group.

Devaluing the Individual

Creates fear of freedom and dependence upon captors

Creates feelings of helplessness

Develops lack of faith in individual capabilities

Abusive leaders are frequently uncannily able to pick out traits church members are proud of and to use those very traits against the members. Those with natural gifts in the areas of music may be told they are proud or puffed up or "anxious to be up front" if they want to use their talents and denied that opportunity. Those with discernment are called judgmental or critical, the merciful are lacking in holiness or good judgment, the peacemakers are reminded the Lord came to bring a sword, not peace. Sometimes efforts are made to convince members that they really are not gifted teachers or musically talented or prophetically inclined as they believed they were. When members begin to doubt the one or two special gifts they possess which they have always been sure were God-given, they begin to doubt everything else they have ever believed about themselves, to feel dependent upon church leaders and afraid to leave the group. ("If I've been wrong about even *that*, how can I ever trust myself to make right decisions ever again?").

Warning Signs:
Unwillingness to allow members to use their gifts. Establishing rigid boot camp-like requirements for the sake of proving commitment to the group before gifts may be exercised. Repeatedly criticizing natural giftedness by reminding members they must die to their natural gifts, that Paul, after all, said, "When I'm weak, I'm strong," and that they should expect God to use them in areas other than their areas of giftedness. Emphasizing helps or service to the group as a prerequisite to church ministry. This might take the form of requiring that anyone wanting to serve in any way first have the responsibility of cleaning toilets or cleaning the church for a specified time, that anyone wanting to sing in the worship band must first sing to the children in Sunday School, or that before exercising any gifts at all, members must demonstrate loyalty to the group by faithful attendance at all functions and such things as tithing. No consideration is given to the length of time a new member has been a Christian or to his age or station in life or his unique talents or abilities. The rules apply to everyone alike. This has the effect of reducing everyone to some kind of lowest common denominator where no one's gifts or natural abilities are valued or appreciated, where the individual is not cherished for the unique blessing he or she is to the body of Christ, where what is most highly valued is service, obedience, submission to authority, and performance without regard to gifts or abilities or, for that matter, individual limitations.5

Thought Reform

"Thought reform" is the Orwellian vision in which people are programmed to think alike for the prosperity of the State. Unbeknownst to Orwell, China was subjecting students to this "reeducation" process to adopt Communism.

Wikipedia reports that in Influence, Science and Practice, "social psychology researcher Robert Caildini argues that mind control is possible through the covert exploitation of the unconscious rules that underlie and facilitate healthy human social interactions." 1 "Robert Cialdini is an internationally respected expert in the fields of persuasion, compliance, and negotiation. His books Influence: Science and Practice and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion are the result of years of study into the reasons that people comply with requests in business and other settings." 2 Cialdini defines six "weapons of influence":

Reciprocity - People tend to return a favor, thus the pervasiveness of free samples in marketing.

Commitment and Consistency - If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment because of establishing that idea or goal as being congruent with their self image. Even if the original incentive or motivation is removed after they have already agreed, they will continue to honor the agreement.

Social Proof - People will do things that they see other people are doing.

Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked to perform objectionable acts.

Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people that they like.

Scarcity - Perceived scarcity will generate demand. 3

Using these six broad categories, Cialdini "offers specific examples of both mild and extreme mind control (both one on one and in groups), notes the conditions under which each social rule is most easily exploited for false ends, and offers suggestions on how to resist such methods." 4

Robert Jay Lifton used the term "thought reform" to include milieu control, mystical manipulation, confession, self-sanctification through purity, aura of sacred science, loaded language, doctrine over person, and dispensed existence.

Milieu control
All communication with outside world is limited, either being strictly filtered or completely cut off. Whether it is a monastery or a behind-closed-doors cult, isolation from the ideas, examples and distractions of the outside world turns the individuals attention to the only remaining form of stimulation, which is the ideology that is being inculcated in them.

This even works at the intrapersonal level, and individuals are discouraged from thinking incorrect thoughts, which may be termed evil, selfish, immoral and so on.

Mystical manipulation
A part of the teaching is that the group has a higher purpose than others outside the group. This may be altruistic, such as saving the world or helping people in need. It may also be selfish, for example that group members will be saved when others outside the group will perish.

All things are then attributed and linked to this higher purpose. Coincidences (which actually may be deliberately engineered) are portrayed as symbolic events. Attention is given to the problems of out-group people and attributed to their not being in the group. Revelations are attributed to spiritual causes.

This association of events is used as evidence that the group truly is special and exclusive.

Confession
Individuals are encouraged to confess past 'sins' (as defined by the group). This creates a tension between the person's actions and their stated belief that the action is bad, particularly if the statement is made publicly. The consistency principle thus leads the person to fully adopt the belief that the sin is bad and to distance themselves from repeating it.

Discussion of inner fears and anxieties, as well as confessing sins is exposing vulnerabilities and requires the person to place trust in the group and hence bond with them. When we bond with others, they become our friends, and we will tend to adopt their beliefs more easily.

This effect may be exaggerated with intense sessions where deep thoughts and feelings are regularly surfaced. This also has the effect of exhausting people, making them more open to suggestion.

Self-sanctification through purity
Individuals are encouraged to constantly push towards an ultimate and unattainable perfection. This may be rewarded with promotion within the group to higher levels, for example by giving them a new status name (acolyte, traveller, master, etc.) or by giving them new authority within the group.

The unattainability of the ultimate perfection is used to induce guilt and show the person to be sinful and hence sustain the requirement for confession and obedience to those higher than them in the groups order of perfection.

Not being perfect may be seen as deserving of punishment, which may be meted out by the higher members of the group or even by the person themselves, who are taught that such atonement and self-flagellation is a valuable method of reaching higher levels of perfection.

Aura of sacred science
The beliefs and regulations of the group are framed as perfect, absolute and non-negotiable. The dogma of the group is presented as scientifically correct or otherwise unquestionable.

Rules and processes are therefore to be followed without question, and any transgression is a sin and hence requires atonement or other forms of punishment, as does consideration of any alternative viewpoints.

Loaded language
New words and language are created to explain the new and profound meanings that have been discovered. Existing words are also hijacked and given new and different meaning.

This is particularly effective due to the way we think a lot though language. The consequence of this is that the person who controls the meaning of words also controls how people think. In this way, black-and-white thinking is embedded in the language, such that wrong-doers are framed as terrible and evil, whilst those who do right (as defined by the group) are perfect and marvellous.

The meaning of words are kept hidden both from the outside world, giving a sense of exclusivity. The meaning of special words may also be revealed in careful illuminatory rituals, where people who are being elevated within the order are given the power of understanding this new language.

Doctrine over person
The importance of the group is elevated over the importance of the individual in all ways. Along with this comes the importance of the the [sic] group's ideas and rules over personal beliefs and values.

Past experiences, beliefs and values can all thus be cast as being invalid if they conflict with group rules. In fact this conflict can be used as a reason for confession of sins. Likewise, the beliefs, values and words of those outside the group are equally invalid.

Dispensed existence
There is a very sharp line between the group and the outside world. Insiders are to be saved and elevated, whilst outsiders are doomed to failure and loss (which may be eternal).

Who is an outsider or insider is chosen by the group. Thus, any person within the group may be damned at any time. There are no rights of membership except, perhaps, for the leader.

People who leave the group are singled out as particularly evil, weak, lost or otherwise to be despised or pitied. Rather than being ignored or hidden, they are used as examples of how anyone who leaves will be looked down upon and publicly denigrated.

People thus have a constant fear of being cast out, and consequently work hard to be accepted and not be ejected from the group. Outsiders who try to persuade the person to leave are doubly feared.

Dispensation also goes into all aspects of living within the group. Any and all aspects of existence within the group is subject to scrutiny and control. There is no privacy and, ultimately, no free will.5

Psychologist Margaret Singer described in her book Cults in our Midst six conditions which would create an atmosphere where thought reform is possible to include controlling a person's time and environment, leaving no time for thought; creating a sense of powerlessness, fear and dependency; manipulating rewards and punishments to suppress former social behavior; manipulating rewards and punishments to elicit the desired behaviour; creating a closed system of logic which makes dissenters feel as if something was wrong with them; and keeping recruits unaware about any agenda to control or change them:

These conditions create the atmosphere needed to put a thought reform system into place:

Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is being changed a step at a time.
Potential new members are led, step by step, through a behavioral-change program without being aware of the final agenda or full content of the group. The goal may be to make them deployable agents for the leadership, to get them to buy more courses, or get them to make a deeper commitment, depending on the leader's aim and desires.

Control the person's social and/or physical environment; especially control the person's time.
Through various methods, newer members are kept busy and led to think about the group and its content during as much of their waking time as possible.

Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.
This is accomplished by getting members away from the normal social support group for a period of time and into an environment where the majority of people are already group members. The members serve as models of the attitudes and behaviors of the group and speak an in- group language. Strip members of their main occupation (quit jobs, drop out of school) or source of income or have them turn over their income (or the majority of) to the group. Once stripped of your usual support network, your confidence in your own perception erodes. As your sense of powerlessness increases, your good judgment and understanding of the world are diminished. (ordinary view of reality is destabilized) As group attacks your previous worldview, it causes you distress and inner confusion; yet you are not allowed to speak about this confusion or object to it – leadership suppresses questions and counters resistance. This process is speeded up if you are kept tired – the cult will keep you constantly busy.

Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person's former social identity.
Manipulation of experiences can be accomplished through various methods of trance induction, including leaders using such techniques as paced speaking patterns, guided imagery, chanting, long prayer sessions or lectures, and lengthy meditation sessions. Your old beliefs and patterns of behavior are defined as irrelevant or evil. Leadership wants these old patterns eliminated, so the member must suppress them. Members get positive feedback for conforming to the group's beliefs and behaviors and negative feedback for old beliefs and behavior.

Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the group's ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviors.
Good behavior, demonstrating an understanding and acceptance of the group's beliefs, and compliance are rewarded while questioning, expressing doubts or criticizing are met with disapproval, redress and possible rejection. If one expresses a question, he or she is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to be questioning. The only feedback members get is from the group, they become totally dependent upon the rewards given by those who control the environment. Members must learn varying amounts of new information about the beliefs of the group and the behaviors expected by the group. The more complicated and filled with contradictions the new system in and the more difficult it is to learn, the more effective the conversion process will be. Esteem and affection from peers is very important to new recruits. Approval comes from having the new member's behaviors and thought patterns conform to the models (members). Members' relationship with peers is threatened whenever they fail to learn or display new behaviors. Over time, the easy solution to the insecurity generated by the difficulties of learning the new system is to inhibit any display of doubts – new recruits simply acquiesce, affirm and act as if they do understand and accept the new ideology.

Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order.
The group has a top-down, pyramid structure. The leaders must have verbal ways of never losing. Members are not allowed to question, criticize or complain – if they do, the leaders allege that the member is defective – not the organization or the beliefs. The individual is always wrong – the system, its leaders and its belief are always right. Conversion or remolding of the individual member happens in a closed system. As members learn to modify their behavior in order to be accepted in this closed system, they change – begin to speak the language – which serves to further isolate them from their prior beliefs and behaviors.6

Wikipedia writes of psychologist and cult counselor Steven Hassan:

Using the research of Singer and Lifton and the cognitive dissonance theory of Leon Festinger, [Hassan] describes in his 2000 book Releasing the Bonds the BITE (Behavior, Information, Thought, Emotion) model, which explains mind control as a combination of control over behavior, information, thought and emotions. According to Hassan, the BITE model dispenses with any required environment control, and its effects can be achieved when the control mechanisms create overall dependency and obedience to some leader or cause. However, many scholars in the field of new religious movements do not accept Hassan's Bite model for understanding cults.7

Destructive mind control can be understood in terms of four basic components, which form the acronym BITE:

I. Behavior Control
II. Information Control
III. Thought Control
IV. Emotional Control

It is important to understand that destructive mind control can be determined when the overall effect of these four components promotes dependency and obedience to some leader or cause. It is not necessary for every single item on the list to be present. Mind controlled cult members can live in their own apartments, have nine-to-five jobs, be married with children, and still be unable to think for themselves and act independently.

I. Behavior Control

Regulation of individual's physical reality

Where, how and with whom the member lives and associates with

What clothes, colors, hairstyles the person wears

What food the person eats, drinks, adopts, and rejects

How much sleep the person is able to have

Financial dependence

Little or no time spent on leisure, entertainment, vacations

Major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals

Past "sins" used to manipulate and control; no forgiveness or absolution

III. Thought Control

Need to internalize the group's doctrine as "Truth"

Map = Reality

Black and White thinking

Good vs. evil

Us vs. them (inside vs. outside)

Adopt "loaded" language (characterized by "thought-terminating clichés"). Words are the tools we use to think with. These "special" words constrict rather than expand understanding. They function to reduce complexities of experience into trite, platitudinous "buzz words".

No critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate

No alternative belief systems viewed as legitimate, good, or useful

IV. Emotional Control

Manipulate and narrow the range of a person's feelings.

Make the person feel like if there are ever any problems it is always their fault, never the leader's or the group's.

Excessive use of guilt

Identity guilt

Who you are (not living up to your potential)

Your family

Your past

Your affiliations

Your thoughts, feelings, actions

Social guilt

Historical guilt

Excessive use of fear

Fear of thinking independently

Fear of the "outside" world

Fear of enemies

Fear of losing one's "salvation"

Fear of leaving the group or being shunned by group

Fear of disapproval

Extremes of emotional highs and lows.

Ritual and often public confession of "sins".

Phobia indoctrination : programming of irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority. The person under mind control cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group.

Shunning of leave takers. Fear of being rejected by friends, peers, and family.

Never a legitimate reason to leave. From the group's perspective, people who leave are: "weak;" "undisciplined;" "unspiritual;" "worldly;" "brainwashed by family, counselors;" seduced by money, sex, rock and roll.8

Dumbed Down

One means of bringing about thought reform is by "dumbing down" the population so it has less experience from which to draw. Throughout the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, "the reading level of textbooks dropped by two grade levels. That is, what used to be third-grade material is now fifth-grade material," writes Nancy Montgomery in her 1996 article "Dumbed-down texts too easy, too simple, too boring, critics say" for The Seattle Times newspaper.1

Source: Non Sequitur by Wiley

According to the ProLiteracy website, "In the U.S., 30 million people over age 16 – 14 percent of the country's adult population – don't read well enough to understand a newspaper story written at the eighth grade level or fill out a job application." 2 They also reported that the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey discovered that up to 51 percent of American adults "lack a sufficient foundation of basic skills to function successfully in our society." 3 A 2002 Seattle Times article entitled "What we don't know about science could fill books" reported the National Science Foundation discovering "that only about a third of adults showed a good understanding of the scientific process." 4

Carl Sagan, whose television series "Cosmos" popularized science, "knew that if we were to have even a little bit of democracy in this society, as many of us as possible should understand the workings, language, values and methods of science and technology so that we can’t be so easily manipulated." 5

Jim Keith writes in Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness that "since the advent of 'progressive education' schools have not been intended to educate, but simply to regiment. [Public school] does not challenge children to learn or to think creatively, but instead indoctrinates them to conform to their prison-like surroundings." 6 Today's schools are producing young adults primed to follow orders rather than think critically. According to Alvin Toffler in his landmark 1970 book Future Shock, "nothing could be better calculated to produce people uncertain of their goals, people incapable of effective decision-making under conditions of overchoice." 7

"Who benefits when the great mass of people becomes complaisant, unable to think, unable to entertain themselves, and interested only in possessions?" asks Heidi Stevenson in "So-Called Education Intentionally Dumbs Down Americans" for Natural News Network. "The answer is simple: corporations. When the mass of children are forced to go through a system that destroys creativity and rewards group-think, they are prepared to fill their predestined roles in a lockstep workforce and unthinking consumption corps." The article continues:

In 1918, Alexander Inglis, for whom a Harvard lecture hall was named, published the definitive book, Principles of Secondary Education, which defines modern schooling. He specifically stated that its purpose is to support a command economy and society. This book describes modern "education's" design. According to Inglis, there are six functions filled by the new mandatory "education" system:

2. Integrative: Making children conform, making them be predictable and easy to manipulate in a large labor force.

3. Diagnosis and Direction: Schools are intended to identify and enforce each child's role in society and the labor force.

4. Differentiation: Once diagnosed, children are trained as far as their role in labor has been determined.

5. Selection: Children are tagged with punishments, poor grades, poor classroom placement, and any other humiliation that can be thought of. The purpose is to separate out those the system determines to be unfit and allow them to be treated as inferiors by the rest.

6. Preparation (called propaedeutic by Inglis): Those few deemed to be leaders, often only by their birth, are taught to be the controllers of the masses described in the other five functions.8

The average IQ is considered to be 100 for a target population. Given that education has been dumbed down by several grade levels since World War Two, today's average 100 IQ would have been much lower in previous generations. "Technology is changing the world to such a large extent that many children know how to use a computer or a smartphone but cannot ride a bike, swim, make breakfast or even tie their own shoelaces," reports the TechEYE.net website referring to the internet security firm AVG study which "surveyed 2,200 mothers of children under five who had internet access as part of the Digital Diaries series of studies, highlighting how exposed children are to technology." The article continues:

It was revealed that 58 percent of the children in the two to five year old bracket had mastered how to play a basic computer game, with the figure jumping to 70 percent for children in the UK and France, showing the prevalence of video games for toddlers.

Even in the two to three year old bracket nearly half, 44 percent, were able to play a computer game. In comparison, only 43 percent of the same age knew how to ride a bike, one of the first skills learned in childhood.

19 percent of children aged two to five are smart enough to use a smartphone, but only nine percent of the same age group can tie their shoelaces, one of the most basic life skills we're thought. 21 percent of four to five year olds knew how to use a smartphone app, while 17 percent of two to three olds had the same skill, showing that children are being exposed to technology at an even younger age.

The report also found that there is very little gender divide in terms of technology skills, with 58 percent of boys knowing how to play a computer game, compared to 59 percent of girls. Likewise, 28 percent of boys could make a mobile phone call, compared to 29 percent of girls.

25 percent of young children could open a web browser, but only 20 percent could swim unaided, so parents may need to keep an eye on their youngsters on the PC just as much as in the pool.

Older mothers were seen as better at teaching life skills, with 40 percent of over 35s teaching their toddlers how to write their own name, compared to only 35 percent of mothers under 35. Let’s hope they’re teaching them to value their family more than social networking at least, since a previous study revealed that Facebook and the like was more important.

More European young children had technology skills than US children, with 44 percent of children in Italy able to make a mobile phone call, compared to 25 percent in the US. 70 percent of children in the UK could play a computer game, compared to 61 percent in the US, and 78 percent of kids in France could use a mouse, compared to 67 percent in the US.

AVG said that parents need to take these findings into consideration, because with children using technology at a younger age it means parents need to teach them computer and online safety earlier than previously expected. They might want to teach them how to tie their shoelaces while they’re at it.9

Related books

Hypnotism in Warfare

Hypnosis is a phenomenon used by "priests in Egypt and Greece in 'sleep temples' hundreds of years before Chirst," writes Margaret O. Hyde in Brainwashing and Other Forms of Mind Control.1 Expert Dr. George H. Estabrooks wrote in his 1943 book Hypnotism that professor Clark Hull of Yale Univeristy compared hypnosis to the conditioned reflex.2 Speaking as the chairman of the Department of Psychology of Colgate University, Estabrooks said, "I can hypnotize a man without his knowledge or consent into committing treason against the United States," writes Jerry E. Smith in HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy.3

Carla Emery noted in Secret, Don’t Tell: The Encyclopedia of Hypnotism that "Estabrooks proposed, over and over, that superspies with one-way amnesia should be created by deliberate personality splitting." 4Walter Wager writes in his 1975 Telefon, a book-turned-movie about brainwashed sleeper agents, that "the perfect deep-cover agent…is the one who doesn't know he or she is an agent." 5 Estabrooks explains in Hypnotism:

The possible uses of hypnotism in warfare cover a wide field. The use of hypnotism in warfare represents the cloak and dagger idea at its best – or worst. [If] we deliberately set up this condition of multiple personality to further the ends of military intelligence, the proper training of a person would be long and tedious, but once he was trained, you would have a super spy.

Such a subject prepared for use as a super spy would be a nightmare to any intelligence department: a synthetic hypnotic spy with a dual personality is extremely hard to detect. Under the conditions of warfare they would be a constant source of danger. First, there is no danger of the agent's selling out. More important would be the conviction of innocence which the man himself had, and this is a great aid in many situations. Finally, it would be impossible to "third degree" him.

If we care to translate that into the field of crime, we can see the ease with which we could prepare a watertight alibi. Hypnotism in crime is very close to hypnotism in warfare.

A nation fighting with its back to the wall is not worried over the niceties of ethics. If hypnotism can be used to advantage, we can rest assured that it will be so employed.6

Secretly funded by the CIA, the Head of the American, Canadian and World Psychiatric Associations, Dr. Ewen Cameron, employed his "psychic driving" process from 1957 to 1964 to "depattern" hundreds of patients in Canada. Using powerful drug cocktails, extreme electroconvulsive therapy, induced comas, and playing a patient's own recorded words back to them repeatedly, the purpose of psychic driving was to rebuild a subject's personality. His human guinea pigs would inevitably become worse off after treatments. Eventually Cameron would admit his experiments weren't as effective as he had hoped.

It took five decades, but several victims of Ewen Cameron's Mind Control experiments were finally entitled monetary compensation after a successful class action lawsuit filed by lawyer Alan Stein on behalf of Janine Huard. The brooksbulletin.com news website reported that "in 1994, 77 patients were awarded $100,000 each from the federal government but more than 250 others were denied compensation because they were not 'totally depatterned.'" 7

Jonathan Edwards discovered a simpler method of affecting change during a religious crusade in 1735. Dick Sutphen reports in The Battle For Your Mind: Persuasion & Brainwashing Techniques Being Used On The Public Today at his DickSutphen.com website:

By inducing guilt and acute apprehension and by increasing the tension, the sinners attending his revival meetings would break down and completely submit. Technically, what Edwards was doing was creating conditions that wipe the brain slate clean so that the mind accepts new programming.8

Related books

Terror Cults

Anthony Stahelski in the March 2004 Journal of Homeland Security, notes that "terrorism researchers have compared terrorist groups to cults, and they have concluded that the cult model applicable to terrorist groups [Stephen J. Morgan, The Mind of a Terrorist Fundamentalist: The Psychology of Terror Cults (Awe-Struck E-Books, 2001)]":

Der Fuehrer's Face (c)WDP

Most cults center on a charismatic leader. Charismatic leaders have many of the following characteristics: physical presence, intelligence, experience, education and expertise, the ability to verbally and clearly articulate the vision and the mission, and, most important, a strong emotional appeal. Most joiners of cults respond to the leader’s message first at an emotional level, then later at the physical and intellectual levels. Joiners report that they have finally found someone who has the answers to life’s perplexing questions and who is therefore worthy of their total commitment [Thomas Robbins, Cults, Converts, and Charisma: The Sociology of New Religious Movements (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988)].

In exchange for providing joiners with meaningful existences and for fulfilling their affiliative emotional needs, the leader requests and receives unquestioning obedience from the joiners. Long-term members of the group support the leader’s obedience pressure by applying conformity pressure on new joiners in order to forestall any deviation from the group’s mission or values. The joiners’ initial susceptibility to this intense obedience and conformity pressure makes them extremely vulnerable to the five-phase social psychological conditioning process used in violent cults.1

It's worth noting at this point that there's nothing unusual or bizarre about the basic methods of influence that cult groups use. Charismatic leaders of the type he describes are also found in politics, churches and business, too. It's the particular combination of processes that make a cult group distinct from other types of groups. It's also important to recognize that cult groups are not always religious groups.

Depluraization involves cutting off ones ties to the various groups by which individuals in society define the identity on a normal basis:

In stable, normal (non-crisis) societies, most individuals are pluralized – that is, they fulfill their affiliative needs by belonging to a variety of groups. None of these affiliations, with the possible exception of the family group, is absolutely essential to an individual's self-concept.

Self-deinviduation is a redefinition of the individual's identity in the cult's terms. Cult researchers Margaret Thaler Singer and Lanja Lalich have described the development of a "pseudopersonality" in which individuals conform themselves to the highly restricted environment of the cult. Stahelski describes the process this way:

Internally, all recruits are expected to give up any values, beliefs, attitudes, or behavior patterns that deviate from the group values and expectations. Deindividuated joiners give up their personal sense of right and wrong if it is different from that of the leader. Furthermore, the joiners’ broader view of reality – their view of how the past, present, and future fit together to create the modern social world – becomes aligned with that of the leader.

Other-deindividuation is the process in which, as Stahelski puts it, "All enemies become a homogeneous, faceless mass: they all look alike, think alike, and act alike." Again, this is a normal human characteristic, the us vs. them feeling. Patriotism, solidarity with one's own religious group, professional loyalties, all of these use the same process. It's the combination with other factors that distinguish it in the cult context.

Dehumanization could probably be seen as part of the same process he calls "other-deindividuation." He defines the "dehumanization" process this way:

All positive characteristics (for example, moral virtue, intelligence, responsibility, honesty, trustworthiness, reliability) are attributed to members of the "in" group, and all negative characteristics (moral degeneracy, stupidity, irresponsibility, dishonesty, untrustworthiness, unreliability) are attributed to members of the "out" group. Dehumanization occurs when the enemy and the enemy's characteristics are associated with nonhuman entities, such as animals, vermin, filth, and germs. Nazi propaganda in the 1930s compared the Jews and their negative characteristics to rats and cockroaches.

Demonization, the fifth phase of the social psychological conditioning process, occurs when cult members become convinced that the enemy is in league with the devil and cosmic evil. Since most cultures define "good" in comparison to "evil," demonization is a widely available conditioning strategy. Referring to the United States as the "Great Satan" is an example of cultural demonization.2

Source: IsraelsMessiah.com

Today, "the Palestinian authority is transmitting a message to the younger generation: the goal of life is death," reports the "Children of Jihad" news report. "Children are instructed: throw down your toys and replace them with rocks":

The goal of this training is to program the children to be ready and willing to murder and kill of their own free will even if it means that they themselves will die. The deliberate incitement of the children has gradually lost all restraints. The incitement reaches each household through televison and radio spots, it permeates the schools, and the textbooks are riddled with teachings of hate.

Teaching children to hate inundates them from all directions. Cartoons and characters in children's magazines and newspapers remind them to throw stones. Photographs of martyrs adorn every wall. Children are taught not to fear death but to welcome it.

In a society in which legitimization of child murderers becomes a part of its ideology then normative human morality no longer exists. All of this has been orchestrated quite methodically by the Palestinian authority who, with malice of forethought and directed from above, have transformed children into political pawns.

The children are taught that suicide bombs are the only thing that terrifies the Israeli people and that they "have the right to do it." Moreover, the children are taught that "after their suicide attacks, the man who makes it goes to highest estate in paradise" 3 where 72 beautiful virgins (or houris) – "in Muslim belief, women who live with the blessed in paradise" 4 – will "minister to their every need and desire." 5

The "Children of Jihad" report notes a study conducted by a Palestinian psychologist who found "more than 50% of [Palestinian] children aged 6 to 11 dream of becoming suicide bombers who wear explosive belts." The psychologist states that "in about 10 years a very murderous generation will come of age full of hatred and ready to die in suicide missions." 6

Related books

Torture

Abu Ghraib abuse

Governments' long history of employing torture was brought to the forefront again during the allied forces' occupation of Iraq when Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and military personnel were placed under investigation after graphic photographs of the abuse surfaced in April 2004. Many of the images depicted sensory deprivation and the Soviet's KGB-style self-inflicted pain of standing until cooperating. Other images depicted even worse acts meant to degrade and humiliate prisoners. The Seattle Times reports:

The [George W.] Bush administration drafted amendments to the War
Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policymakers from
possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and
degrading treatment of detainees.1

Phillip Adams, in "Torture as American as apple pie" for The Australian, paraphrases Alfred McCoy's A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror:

[In the 1950s,] Donald Hebb found a form of torture far more effective than drugs or beatings. He could induce a state of psychosis within 48 hours, even in the healthy, well-adjusted students who volunteered to be guinea pigs. "By sitting them in a cubicle with goggles, gloves and headphones, cut off from their senses and sensory stimulation, they soon suffered hallucinations and then breakdown."

Combining the KGB technique with Hebb's discoveries produced a distinctively American style of torture, detailed by the CIA in their KUBARK counterintelligence manual. Refined in the field during the Kennedy years, in Central America and Southeast Asia, the approach was marketed by John F. Kennedy's Office of Public Safety. By 1971 over a million police officers in 47 nations had been trained, including 85,000 in South Vietnam and 100,000 in Brazil.

Officials deny it is American policy to torture, and point to their interrogation handbook, which interestingly enough condoned "waterboarding," or partial drowning. The prison Mind Control methods used by the U.S. in Southwest Asia included soldiers raping Iraqi children while their parents were forced to watch.

Related books

Stalking

State by state stalking laws may be found at the End Stalking in America, Inc. website.1 The Psychological Harassment Information Association website writes:

Psychological Harassment is not a new phenomenon but it is one that is on the rise. Many victims of psychological harassment suffer from physical ailments, irritability, anxiety, nervousness, insomnia, stress, fatigue, depressive states, burn outs, and in some cases suicide. Many are unable to continue working and suffer financial loss.2

According to the website Freedom from Covert Harassment and Surveillance:

Millions of people across this country and the globe are being targeted for harassment in various forms by a growing number of harassment groups. Citizens are being watched, followed, monitored and tortured; their private lives invaded, ruined, and many kept in virtual isolation from friends and family.3

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) Office for Victims of Crime, the Supplemental Victimization Survey to the National Crime Victimization Survey4 measures the following stalking behaviors:

making unwanted phone calls;

sending unsolicited or unwanted letters or e-mails;

following or spying on the victim;

showing up at a place where they had no reason to be;

waiting at places for the victim;

leaving unwanted items, presents, or flowers;

posting information or spreading rumors about the victim on the internet, in a public place, or by word of mouth.

"Some of the SVS: Stalking Victimization in the United States Report findings include:

During a 12 month period an estimated 3.4 million persons age 18 or older were victims of stalking.

The rate of stalking victimizations for males was approximately 7 per 1,000 males age 18 or older.

Persons age 18 to 19 and 20 to 24 experienced the highest rates of stalking victimization.

One in 7 victims reported they moved as a result of the stalking.

Approximately 60% do not report victimization to the police.5

"Any form of persistent harassment can bring fear into your life, from phone calls to unwanted visits and letters," writes the website TheSite.org in "Dealing with stalkers," a list of tactics to use if you think you're being stalked:

Get in touch with your local police: Don't worry if there isn't much to report - so long as you feel you're personal safety is at risk then your complaint will be taken seriously - and the sooner you speak up the easier it'll be for the cops to start building a case.

Start a diary, and record every incident in detail. Also think in terms of evidence, and be sure to get hold of anything that may prove you're being stalked - an answer machine tape with their voice on it, letters they may have sent, even video footage if you can - just don't put yourself in danger to collect it.

Inform friends, family and neighbours of the situation, so they can keep an eye out for you.

Check your home security. Be sure that every door and window in your place has locks, and all keys are accounted for.

Reconsider your daily routines: Try to vary your movements. The less predictable you are the harder it is for anyone to track you down.

Avoid being alone: You'll feel less vulnerable in company, while limiting the opportunity for weird and creepy people to make advances.6

Online harassment is also an increasing problem, from sending unwanted spam and other inappropriate contact, to impersonation, to gaining unlawful access to accounts. Social networks including Facebook and MySpace – where people often share personal information they wouldn't dare communicate in person – are prime targets for predators and the topic of numerous television news segments. Cyberstalking made headlines in 2008 when a girl's suicide resulted in federal charges for "accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress," according to a press release.7

Harassment is even being perpetrated by groups of people, creditors aside. The 1999 movie "Fight Club" provides a fictional depiction of Secret Societies targeting individuals and businesses. The website GangStalking.ca presented an overview of David Lawson's book, Terrorist [Vigilante] Stalking in America:

Gang stalking involves the use of multiple individuals to stalk, harass and taunt a victim, as well as to vandalize personal property. This can take place for many years, particularly since law enforcement and legislation have yet to catch up with the reality of organized stalking by groups.8

"Targetted Individuals" (or TIs) are typically atypical citizens. In addition to whistleblowers, multistalking victims include political activists, protesters, feminists, gays, lesbians, people with tolerant attitudes, people who are a little odd or eccentric, and anyone who questions authority, signs a petition, or sends letters to the editor of a newspaper.

To commemorate National Stalking Awareness Month in January 2010, the USDOJ presented a web forum on stalking in the workplace. Workplace mobbing is a growing problem in all sectors of business for a wide variety of reasons.

There has also been an apparent increase in industrial espionage. Gang stalking perpetrators or "perps" are quite effective at making people crazy, and causing a business leader to suffer a nervous breakdown could spell disaster for a company.

Another form of this Mind Control relates to cause stalkers who believe the TIs are degenerates needing to be driven out of the community. Beginning long ago with the racist Ku Klux Klan (KKK) targetting civic minded people, cause stalking in modern times has been reported by abortion providers, for example.

Gang stalking perps will also resort to a technique aptly named "street theater," a ploy which the website Raven1.net describes:

"Street theater" is activity performed by persons complicit in the electronic weapons harassment, but are "skits", as opposed to direct bodily attacks performed with the electronic harassment equipment. They are performed in such a way that the target, and ONLY the target, knows they are being harassed, but cannot convey to others that this is indeed harassment. Feelings of total hoplessness [sic] is one apparent purpose of these "skits". Another apparent purpose of such "skits" is to discredit and isolate the target so that others will regard him or her as a "crank" and a "nut case" whent the target complains.9

Related books and films

The DOD has a huge stake in futuristic technology that kills by ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.The terms soft kill, slow kill and silent kill refer to the new way of killing the enemy in conflicts short of war.The CIA, military intelligence, and others have built the perfect beast, using selective assassination that leaves no trace.DownloadMonarch: The New Phoenix Program, order the DVD, or buy the ebook.

Voice to Skull (V2K)

"The Voice of God weapon – a device that projects voices into your head to make you think God is speaking to you – is the military's equivalent of an urban myth," writes Wired Magazine. "Meaning, it's mentioned periodically at defense workshops, and typically someone whispers about it actually being used." 1

"The microwave auditory effect, also known as the microwave hearing effect or the Frey effect, consists of audible clicks induced by pulsed/modulated microwave frequencies," reports Wikipedia. James C. Linn notes that "Frey found that human subjects exposed to 1310 MHz and 2982 MHz microwaves at average power densities of 0.4 to 2 mW/cm2 perceived auditory sensations described as buzzing or knocking sounds. The sensation occurred instantaneously at average incident power densities well below that necessary for known biological damage and appeared to originate from within or near the back of the head." 2

Wikipedia continues:

Milimeter wave radar

The clicks are generated directly inside the human head without the need of any receiving electronic device. The effect was first reported by persons working in the vicinity of radar transponders during World War II. These induced sounds are not audible to other people nearby. The existence of non-lethal weaponry that exploits the microwave auditory effect appears to have been classified 'Secret NOFORN' in the USA from (at the latest) 1998, until the declassification on 6 December 2006 of "Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weaponry" in response to a FOIA request.3

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (refer to case #614F-06) was made "for all documents pertaining to the microwave auditory effect, microwave hearing effect, Frey effect, artificial telepathy, and/or any device/weapon which uses and/or causes such effect; and any covert or undisclosed use of hypnosis." Possible influence on subject(s) notes that "microwave hearing may be useful to provide a disruptive condition to a person not aware of the technology. Not only might it be disruptive to the sense of hearing, it could be psychologically devastating if one suddenly heard "voices within one's head". 4

Until 2008 when the entry was abruptly deleted, the online U.S. Army Thesaurus reported of "voice to skull technology" that defined the term as a:

Nonlethal weapon which includes (1) a neuro-electromagnetic device which uses microwave transmission of sound into the skull of persons or animals by way of pulse-modulated microwave radiation; and (2) a silent sound device which can transmit sound into the skull of person or animals. NOTE: The sound modulation may be voice or audio subliminal messages. One application of V2K is use as an electronic scarecrow to frighten birds in the vicinity of airports.5

"Birds seem to be highly sensitive to microwave audio," says Lev Sadovnik of the Sierra Nevada Corporation in the US working on a device "dubbed MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) [which] exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. A series of pulses can be transmitted to produce recognisable sounds." The article in New Scientist continues:

MEDUSA involves a microwave auditory effect "loud" enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation. Sadovnik says that normal audio safety limits do not apply since the sound does not enter through the eardrums. He has carried out his own work on the technique, and was even approached by the music industry about using microwave audio to enhance sound systems, he told New Scientist.

"But is it going to be possible at the power levels necessary?" he asks. Previous microwave audio tests involved very "quiet" sounds that were hard to hear, a high-power system would mean much more powerful - and potentially hazardous - shockwaves.6

Non-microwave equivalents have also been invented that utilize frequency modulation of highly directional ultrasonic sound waves. "Holosonic Research Labs and American Technology Corporation both have versions of directed sound, which can allow a single person to hear a message that others around don't hear," continues Wired Magazine. "DARPA appears to be working on its own sonic projector." 7

Nicholas Jones details electronic Mind Control at the Educate-Yourself.org website:

Subliminal words in the correct electromagnetic-field that expresses human consciousness, attuned to the human brain, can enter our minds at a subconscious level. Our brain activity patterns can apparently be measured and stored on computer by super-computers. If a victim needs subliminal-thoughts implanted, all that is necessary is to capture, save on computer, and target the person's brainwave pattern to send them such low frequency subliminal-messages that they actually think it is their own thoughts.8

Writes Dick Sutphen in "The Battle for Your Mind: Brainwashing Techniques
Being Used On The Public":

There are also inaudible ELFs (extra-low frequency waves). These are electromagnetic in nature. One of the primary uses of ELFs is to communicate with our submarines. Waves below 6 cycles per second caused the subjects to become very emotionally upset, and even disrupted bodily functions. At 8.2 cycles, they felt very high an elevated feeling, as though they had been in masterful meditation, learned over a period of years. Eleven to 11.3 cycles induced waves of depressed agitation leading to riotous behavior.9

Subvocal Speech Recognition

As early as 1975, researchers have been testing "the feasibility of designing a close-coupled, two-way communication link between man and computer using biological information from muscles of the vocal apparatus and the electrical activity of the brain during overt and covert (verbal thinking) speech." 1

An interview with Chuck Jorgensen, Chief Scientist for Neuroengineering at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, explains that:

Subvocal speech is silent, or sub-auditory, speech, such as when a person silently reads or talks to himself. Biological signals arise when reading or speaking to oneself with or without actual lip or facial movement. A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly, it cannot be heard, but the tongue and vocal cords do receive speech signals from the brain.

Quiet cell phones would be one commercial application; possibly communication between divers, is another. Anyone who needs to use noisy haz-mat suits or work in high-noise environments could benefit from this technology. Environments where you want privacy, such as in teleconferencing and you want to talk to someone around the table – the neuro-electronic methods that we are discussing here pick up more than just word patterns that you might have sub-vocally. They can also identify who the speaker is, and track whether the speaker is tired, angry, happy, or sad, so we have a possibility (we have not done this) here of speech enrichment as well as just communication.2

Dilbert (c) Scott Adams, dilbert.com

NASA is also "developing an entirely new type of sensor that doesn’t even have to touch the body, called a capacitive sensor":

What we would like to do is be able to embed those sensors in either clothing or some kind of simple appliance that would be very convenient for someone to have where the electrical signals would be picked up in a non-invasive and comfortable way and available any time they wanted to use them for controlling a device.3

Brain Implants

Source: Delgado, Physical Control of the Mind

Of all the technologies available for Mind Control on an individual, brain implants may be the most invasive. While there is little physical evidence of their diabolical use on the general population, studies have shown the technology to be very effective at controlling behavior. In 1965 The New York Times reported that José Delgado stopped a charging bull with radio controlled implants. Delgado was also "able to 'play' monkeys and cats like 'little electronic toys' that yawn, hide, fight, play, mate and go to sleep on command." 1

Delgado's 1971 Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society is a one-of-a-kind text detailing the power of brain implants. "To this day, Delgado's is the only popular book on the subject of implants and electrical stimulation of the brain," writes Jim Keith in Mind Control, World Control.2

Vance Packard in his 1977 book The People Shapers writes of Robert G. Heath, an early researcher into direct brain stimulation, who "equipped dangerously aggressive mental patients with self-stimulators. A film shows a patient working himself out of a violent mood by pushing his stimulator button." 3

Other brain implant studies have shown that animals including humans given the ability to self-stimulate their brain's pleasure centers will starve to death rather than take time to eat.4

Source: University of Tokyo

"Cybernetically enhanced bugs have become a reality," notes William Eazel in an article for the wireheading.com website.5 Announced by the University of Tokyo in January 1997, Time Magazine reports:

Using hardy American roaches, scientists remove their wings, insert electrodes in their antennae and affix a tiny backpack of electric circuits and batteries to their carapace. The electrodes prod them to turn left and right, go backward and forward. The plan is to equip them with minicameras or other sensory devices.6

"The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions," writes BBC News in their 2006 article "Pentagon plans cyber-insect army." 7The Guardian reports in an interview that "asked to speculate on potential military uses for robotic animals, Dr Talwar [of the State University of New York] agreed they could, in theory, be put to some unpleasant uses, such as assassination.8 "It will mean that every non-human life form in the server room will have to be exterminated," said one security expert in the wireheading.com article.9

Neural implants have even allowed us to see through an animal's eyes by processing signals in the brain.10 As BBC News reported in 1999:

By recording the electrical activity of nerve cells in the thalamus, a region of the brain that receives signals from the eyes, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley were able to view these shapes.… They recorded the output from 177 brain cells that responded to light and dark in the cat's field of view. In total, the 177 cells were sensitive to a field of view of 6.4 by 6.4 degrees. Given time, it will be possible to record what one person sees and "play it back" to someone else either as it is happening or at a later date.11

A microscopic view of the "brain in a dish," or rat neurons growing on a multi-electrode array in a petri dish. (Tom DeMarse)

Neurons have even been cultured on a computer chip that in a matter of minutes learned how to control a virtual F-16 fighter jet. "Enzymes were used to extract neurons from the motor cortex of mature rat embryos and cells were then seeded onto a grid of [60] gold electrodes patterned on a glass Petri dish," reports the NewScientist.com website. University of Florida in Gainesville biomedical engineer Thomas "DeMarse's array of 25,000 interconnected neurons were able to convert signals that indicated whether the simulated plane is experiencing stable conditions or hurricanes into a measurement of whether the plane is flying straight or tilted and then correct the flight path by transmitting signals to the airplane's controls." 12 "When the system is first engaged, the neurones don't know how to control the aeroplane; they don't have any experience," notes the Australian Broadcasting Company:

"Over time, these stimulations modify the network's response such that the neurones slowly [over the course of 15 minutes] learn to control the aircraft," [DeMarse] said. "The end result is a neural network that can fly the plane to produce relatively stable straight and level flight." 13

"(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it's a live computation device," said DeMarse in the University of Florida press release.14 ABC News reports on additional neural computer studies noting:

It is clear that a marriage between neurology, or the study of the human brain, and high speed computers is leading into territory that sounds more like science fiction than fact. Some experts have warned that incredibly smart machines might someday leave the rest of us in the dust, usurping our self-appointed role as the most important creatures on the planet, if not the universe.15

Related links

1 John A. Osmundsen, "'Matador' With a Radio Stops Wired Bull," The New York Times, 17 May 1965, CXIV(39,195), p. 20.

6 "Peepers creepers; Research at the University of Tokyo is investigating ways in which cockroaches with the mini-cameras can be used to locate vermin or perhaps even survivors of earthquakes," Time, 27 January 1997, 149(4), p. 17.

Related books

Tinfoil Hats

tinfoil hatnounhumorousused in allusion to the belief that wearing a hat made from tinfoil will protect one against government surveillance or mind control by extraterrestrial beings:

you don't need to be wearing a tinfoil hat to understand that your privacy might not be as private as you would think

[as modifier] :

the tinfoil hat brigade1

"It has long been suspected that the government has been using satellites to read and control the minds of certain citizens," writes the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at MIT.

The use of aluminum helmets has been a common guerrilla tactic against the government's invasive tactics. Surprisingly, these helmets can in fact help the government spy on citizens by amplifying certain key frequency ranges reserved for government use. In addition, none of the three helmets we analyzed provided significant attenuation to most frequency bands.2

"Intrepid researchers at MIT have released results of their study which threatens to shatter the serenity that is paranoid schizophrenia," writes the Bostonist in "Hey Crazy – Get a New Hat". "Those who thought they had a one-up on the Man suddenly find that the foil hats used in the MIT study (which, by the way, were your run of the mill Reynolds-type variety) actually increased the GHz waves assigned to GPS tracking signals" 3

"For all [double layered tinfoil] helmets, we noticed a 30 db amplification at 2.6 Ghz and a 20 db amplification at 1.2 Ghz, regardless of the position of the antenna on the cranium," notes the MIT researchers. "In addition, all helmets exhibited a marked 20 db attenuation at around 1.5 Ghz, with no significant attenuation beyond 10 db anywhere else."

The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the [United States] government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the [Federal Communications Commission (FCC)], These bands are supposedly reserved for "radio location" (ie, [global positioning system (GPS)], and other communications with satellites. The 2.6 Ghz band coincides with mobile phone technology. Though not affiliated by government, these bands are at the hands of multinational corporations.

It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings.4

Sodium Pentothal

Adriano Taylor writes in a review of the sedative hypnotic Sodium Pentothal:

Sodium Thiopental (also called Sodium Pentothal) has the formula: C11H17NaO2S. This molecule is a trademark of Abbott Laboratories. Sodium Thiopental was discovered in the 1930s by Ernest H. Volwiler and Donalee L. Tabern while working for Abbott Laboratories. Dr. Ralph M. Waters first used it in human beings on March 8, 1934. The investigation centred on its properties, which were discovered to be short-term anesthesia, but surprisingly little analgesia. Its IUPAC name is Sodium 5-ethyl-6-oxo-5-pentan-2-yl-sulfanyl-pyrimidin-4-olate and it has a molecular weight of 264.32.1

During the 1950s Cold War paranoia, a reliable means of coercing prisoners into telling secrets was of upmost priority. In addition to painful tortures, "sodium thiopental was used by the CIA for many years, and was used against Al-Qaeda members to find out secrets within the organization," notes Taylor.2

Username "cameron_05" comments at the ojar.com website that "sodium pentathol [sic] is truth serum and the brand name is Thiopental Sodium 8." 3 In an episode of the award-winning American television series M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital), sodium pentothal is printed as "Na Pent" on shipping crates. Username "slurik" also mentions at the ojar.com site:

Source: Adriano Taylor

A milder form of psychological abuse includes exposing subjects (intravenously or orally) to sodium pentathol. Sodium pentathol [sic] is an ultra-short-acting barbiturate that depresses the central nervous system, slows heart rate, and lowers blood pressure. In the relaxed state produced by the drug, subjects are more susceptible to suggestion and are therefore easier to interrogate. The drug does not actually guarantee that prisoners will tell the truth, however. Often, it makes subjects "gabby" without revealing any important information. This substance has been tested in accomplis to LSD, which proved to be a most efficient means of inducing short term amnesia. Many tests were done by the CIA for this reason.4

Large doses of Ritalin and Sodium Pentothal have been used in narcoanalysis. (Ritalin is used to counteract the powerful effects of the Sodium Pentathol.) During this drug-induced state, the subject becomes highly relaxed, easily suggestible, and more freely shares information.

Sodium Pentothal was also used as an ingredient in lethal injections, though now that the drug is no longer manufactured in the United States, prisons are switching to Pentobarbitol, a move that displeases its manufacturer, Lundbeck Inc.5

Mickey Finn

The 1977 award-winning musical "Annie" introduced countless audience members to the term Mickey Finn1 in the hit song "It's The Hard-Knock Life" when the children sang "Make her drink a Mickey Finn" in a series of various methods of getting revenge upon the despicable head of the orphanage, Miss Hannigan.2

(c)WDP

Mike Wallace in Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory referenced The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd edition, for his definition of Mickey Finn:

Mickey Finn n. Slang. An alcoholic beverage that is surreptitiously altered to induce diarrhea or stupefy, render unconscious or otherwise incapacitate the person who drinks it.3

Assailants surreptitiously lace victims' beverages with the drugs to suppress their memory and eliminate inhibitions, though other delivery systems are also available, including pin pricks. Whether to rob or rape, slipping someone a Mickey is "almost like the perfect crime," according to prosecutor Dennis Nicewander, "because they don't have to worry about a witness testifying against them." 4

While the origin of the term Mickey Finn is unknown, its history traces back to at least 1832 with "the oldest of the hypnotic (sleep inducing} [sic] depressants, chloral hydrate," according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Adminstration. "A solution of chloral hydrate and alcohol constituted the infamous 'knockout drops' or 'Mickey Finn.'" 5

Sedative hypnotics again made headlines in mid-1990s due to a huge increase of young adults and even children spiking drinks with so-called "date rape drugs" with sexual predators in Delaware found to be wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the chemical formula6 for the most popular Mickey Finn at the time, Rohypnol (or Roofies). Emergency legislation was immediately passed in 1996 by the U.S. Congress to raise the penalty for possessing rape drugs from three to 30 years in prison.7

Another drug commonly used by predators is gamma-hydroxy butyrate (GHB). In 2007 a popular children's art supply made in China, Aqua Dots (sold as Bindeez in Australia which had been named toy of the year), was recalled when it was discovered that the beads metabolize into GHB when swallowed.8

Sexuality itself can also be altered in a variety of ways through the introduction of hormones or other substances, learning, and more recently genetic engineering.9 The proximity effect of prenatal siblings affects gender expression, and a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that "women were 25% less likely to have children if their twin was male," reported BBC News in 2007.10 Anecdotal evidence suggests cohabitation to synchronize menstrual cycles among females. Behavioral reinforcement goes a long way in the determination of kinks and fetishes. And chemical castration has even been applied under the auspices of reducing sexual deviancy.11

British news agencies reported in January 2005 of a $7.5 million 1994 U.S. Military project to develop a "Love Bomb" that would make enemy troops sexually attractive to each other. Included were ideas for an "Attack Me" bomb to attract swarms of wasps or rats as well as a long-desired "Who? Me?" bomb that would produce a noxious odor. "A substance to make the skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight was also pondered," reports BBC News.12

"The 1994 plans, from the US air force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Sunshine Project, which exposes chemical and biological weapons research," writes The Telegraph.13

9 "Misexpression of the white (w) gene triggers male-male courtship in Drosophila," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, June 1995, at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/92/12/5525 (retrieved: 22 October 2008).

See also

Drink Detective detects gamma hydroxybuturate (GHB), Ketamine and the more than 60 drugs in the benzodiazepine group that includes Rohypnol®, Valium®, Xanax® and Clonopin®, at http://www.drinkdetective.com/ (retrieved: 26 March 2011).

Cannabis

Throughout all of human history, societies have ingested a wide variety of plant and animal products with noticable side effects for medicinal, religious, and recreational use. In modern times, many of these substances have been criminalized leading to such phenomena as Seattle's Experience Music Project in Washington State including warning signs that simulated drug odors were present at one of its attractions.

The book Green Gold The Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic & Religion by Chris Bennett, Lynn Osburn, and Judy Osburn points out that "hemp has played a prominent role in the development of the religions and civilizations of Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa." 1Green Gold also notes that renowed scientist Dr. Carl Sagan proposed in his book The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence "that hemp was the first plant cultivated by man, dating back to the time of primitive hunter-gatherers." 2

Major uses of industrial hemp

Source: Purdue University

The hemp plant – and its intoxicating cousin marijuana – have been under scrutiny since at least 1936 when the propaganda film "Tell Your Children" (or "Reefer Madness" as it is commonly known by today) was released demonizing the weed.

The following year in 1937 the United States passed the controversial Marijuana Tax Act upon "hearsay and emotional pleas from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and a few state law enforcement agents," writes Chris Conrad in his book Hemp Lifeline to the Future. "The law was tied neither to scientific study nor to law enforcement need. The legislative review concluded that Congress had been 'hoodwinked.'" 3

Renowned criminologist William J. Chambliss of George Washington University notes in his exposé On the Take: From Petty Crooks to Presidents:

Making the drug illegal and thereby creating crime networks is a very high price to pay for a relatively small benefit. Where marijuana use has been essentially legalized, crime networks have dissipated in importance in the production and supply of this commodity.4

Then in 1942 as a result of international upheaval, the U.S. Government temporarily reversed its stance, producing the documentary "Hemp for Victory" to encourage farmers to grow the fibrous plant for the war effort.

During the Turbulent 60s, recreational use of marijuana and other drugs skyrocketed, and the trend continued virtually unabated until U.S. Presidential First Lady Nancy Reagan spearheaded the "Just Say No" Policy in the 1980s.

One interesting find is that marijuana is not conducive to Mind Control, according to Cathy O'Brien with Mark Phillips in their 2004 book Access Denied: For Reasons of National Security. "Since it can render mind control uncontrollable by penetrating memory compartmentalization, marijuana is strictly forbidden in the military, special forces, among spies, etc." 5

4 William J. Chambliss (Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Sociology Department at the George Washington University, and President of the American Society of Criminology (1988)), On the Take: From Petty Crooks to Presidents, Second Edition (Indiana: University Press, 1978, 1988), p. 215.

See also

Small, E. and D. Marcus. 2002. Hemp: A new crop with new uses for North America. p. 284–326. In: J. Janick and A. Whipkey (eds.), Trends in new crops and new uses. ASHS Press, Alexandria, VA; at NewCROP™, Purdue University Center for New Crops & Plant Products, at http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/ncnu02/v5-284.html (retrieved: 25 March 2011).

Related books

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD)

Research has been conducted using the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (or LSD) first synthesized in 1938 by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann. His LSD-25 was derived from ergot, a fungus that attacks rye grain. Ergot poisoning has been proposed as the cause of so-called werewolf epidemics which led to more than 30,000 related court cases in France alone between the years 1520 and 1630,1 according to the Monstrous.com website. Ergotism has also been associated with the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 by New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student Linnda Caporael.2

Some LSD users celebrate 19 April 1943 as "Bicycle Day" when Hofmann "intentionally ingest[ed] 0.25 miligrams (250 micrograms) of the substance, an amount he predicted to be a threshold dose (an actual threshold dose is 20 micrograms3)," writes Wikipedia.

Less than an hour later, Hofmann experienced sudden and intense changes in perception. He asked his laboratory assistant to escort him home and, as use of motor vehicles was prohibited because of wartime restrictions, they had to make the journey on a bicycle. On the way, Hofmann's condition rapidly deteriorated as he struggled with feelings of anxiety, alternatingly believing the next-door neighbor was a malevolent witch, that he was going insane, and the LSD had poisoned him. When the house doctor arrived, however, he could detect no physical abnormalities, save for a pair of incredibly dilated pupils.

Hofmann later wrote:

Little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux.4

Military experiments regarding LSD's effects as a potential weapon were filmed. Archive footage of tests on British5 and American6 soldiers is available online and included below. The American Military video includes the production of so-called "chemtrails" to be released from aircraft. According to the brief documentary, "the idea was to spray the drug on enemy troops; the dose, however, proved rather difficult to
control." 7

The website Holysmoke.org reports that "a favorite plan, during Helms' administration at the CIA, involved
slipping "P-1" (the code name for LSD when used operationally) to socialist or
left-leaning politicians in foreign countries so that they would babble
incoherently and discredit themselves in public." 8

Wikipedia reports on the 1953 alleged LSD-related death of US Army Special Operations Division biological and Mind Control weapons chemist Frank Olson:

According to the government's version of events, as part of the MKULTRA mind control experiments, Olson was dosed with LSD without his knowledge, subsequently suffering severe paranoia and a nervous breakdown. Olson purportedly threw himself out his tenth-floor hotel room window, dying on impact. In 1994, [a forensic scientist at George Washington University] determined that Olson had suffered some form of blunt force trauma prior to falling out of the window, and called the evidence "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide." 9

In a 1975 memo from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command to the president of the University of Maryland (included below), "the US Army sponsored studies of LSD at Army installations and by contracts in civilian institutions between 1955 and 1967." The Army was seeking information on whether any follow up studies were conducted as well as the "names, current address, and Social Security Account Number of individuals who received LSD as part of the Army contracted LSD studies."

Lawrence Galton notes in "Why Young Adults Crack Up" at The Huxley Institute for Biosocial Research of a substance tested in conjuction with LSD:

In 1957, Dr. Robert Heath and a team of Tulane University investigators reported the discovery in the blood of schizophrenics of a strange substance to which they gave the name taraxein. Injected into monkeys, taraxein produced brain-wave changes similar to those in chronic schizophrenics. Given to normal human volunteers, it induced temporary schizophrenic-like behavior.

Because the exact nature of taraxein was not known and the substance had not been isolated in pure form but remained bound up with a fraction of blood called globulin, there was a problem. Dr. Heath and his co-workers went on to try to purify taraxein and to learn more about it.10

Memo for followup LSD studies from U.S. Army to University of Maryland

8 Beatrice Devereaux, "THE CIA, LSD AND THE 60S REBELLION," a review of the book "Acid Dreams" by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, publisher, Grove Press, at http://www.holysmoke.org/wb/wb0049.htm (retrieved: 26 March 2011).

Chemtrails

Source: Wendy Usually Wanders

Source: piratenews.org/chemtrailsoverknoxville.html

Chemtrails resemble harmless contrails but do not quickly dissipate, instead slowly spreading out into what appears to be cloud cover before eventually dropping to the ground. In recent years there have been countless unofficial reports of chemtrail spraying in typical crisscross patterns over populated areas. The U.S. Government has suggested using chemtrails for the purpose of weather modification while officially denying that any spraying is currently being conducted. News investigations of areas heaviest hit by alleged chemtrail spraying have discovered dangerous levels of the radioactive element barium and other toxins in the samples collected.

Radiation

In 1995 U.S. President Bill Clinton apologized for previous administrations subjecting people to radiation often without their consent:

Thousands of government-sponsored experiments did take place at hospitals, universities, and military bases around our nation. The goal was to understand the effects of radiation exposure on the human body.

While most of the tests were ethical by any standards, some were unethical, not only by today's standards, but by the standards of the time in which they were conducted. They failed both the test of our national values and the test of humanity.

In one experience, scientists – experiment – scientists injected plutonium into 18 patients without their knowledge. In another, doctors exposed indigent cancer patients to excessive doses of radiation, a treatment from which it is virtually impossible that they could ever benefit.

The report also demonstrates that these and other experiments were carried out on precisely those citizens who count most on the government for its help – the destitute and the gravely ill. But the dispossessed were not alone. Members of the military – precisely those on whom we and our government count most – they were also test subjects.1

In addition to radiation experiments, "mind control experimentation is known to have taken place, but official American society almost completely denies it or even ridicules the notion," posts Allen L. Barker to the website bio.net in his article "Recent [St. Louis Appeals] Ruling, and Prison Mind Control." 3

Accusations of the U.S. Government using radioactive particles as carriers for chemical weapons were made by late Stanford University researcher and gang stalking victim Clare Louise Therese Wherle in numerous online forums. "Clare was not often believed regarding what she knew about radiation and nano-tech ways of using it for abuse," writes Canadian activist "unity4people" in Wherle's 2006 obituary posted to relevant online news groups, but she "did know her stuff."

Disney

Shaping behavior has long been a tradition for Disney. From theme park "cast members" Brainwashed at the Mouse House to act like lesser beasts, to the animals in their feature films shaped to behave like people, to producing World War Two propaganda films, Disney has been no stranger to Mind Control.

Performing tricks that often defy belief, Disney's behaviorally conditioned pets have led to the popularity and mass demand for specific breeds. Puppy mills were to be expected after the release of Disney's live-action movie 101 Dalmatians,1 especially when their Mulan led countless young girls to butcher their own hair to mimic the behavior of the protagonist in the animated film.2

Disney has been molding its audience since its inception. War propaganda aside, the media giant has been manipulating behavior since at least 1958 when they fooled the world into believing lemmings commit mass suicide by running off of cliffs into the ocean below.3 Disney has since nearly perfected the art of lulling patrons into a false sense of security under the guise of wholesome family entertainment from shaping fanatics who have gone to such extremes as tattooing their bodies with dozens of Disney images4 to even controlling consumer purchasing habits via "The Disney Vault." According to Wikipedia:

The "Disney Vault" is the term used by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment for its policy of putting home video releases of Walt Disney Animation Studios's animated features on moratorium. Each Disney film is available for purchase for a limited time, after which it is put "in the vault" and not made available in stores for several years until it is once again released.

An edition of Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse lampooned the Disney Vault with exaggerated claims, such as Walt Disney's body preserved cryogenically in the vault and an imprisoned Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets that were evidently purchased by Disney in 2004.5

From adult-oriented productions to oversexed Mousketeers to rampant peeping tommery among its employees, Disney has long been a lure for predators. "Voyeurism is a very serious crime," asserts Bill Kelly, an FBI veteran who dealt with sex crimes, notes the Schweizers in their 1998 book Disney: The Mouse Betrayed; Greed, Corruption, and Children at Risk. "It can often escalate to more sex offenses." According to Professor Jack Enter, "Seventy percent of rapists are voyeurs."6

"Disney World is the greatest attraction in the world for children and pedophiles," says Professor Jack Enter, a criminology expert at North Georgia College, as reported in The Mouse Betrayed. The book "was considered highly controversial and resulted in the murder of the author," notes Cathy O'Brien with Mark Phillips in their 2004 book Access Denied: For Reasons of National Security.7

Disney only began performing criminal background checks on new employees after the Schweizers exposed the company hiring convicted sex offenders. An interview with the authors to air on Disney-owned ABC's "20/20" was cancelled.8

Mind Control is the mainstay of the Disney Empire. It is not surprising then that there have been accusations of Disney's collusion with the Illuminati, or New World Order. Disney's animated film Fantasia is often cited as a tool for Illuminati brainwashing. As the Straight Talk About God archive explains:

In 1940, Disney came out with 2 full length animated cartoons, Pinocchio and Fantasia, both of which were soon used for Illuminati mind-control programming. Walt used the Le Sacre du Printemps (the Rite of Spring) music for Fantasia. This piece of music was written AS a pagan ritual where a virgin sacrifices herself by dancing to death. Disney’s mobster Gunther Lessing had threatened Stravinsky if permission weren't given for Disney to use the piece of music, it would be used anyway. Dr. Julian Huxley got involved in the production of Fantasia. Aldous and Julian Huxley are well known by conspiracy researchers for their roles in the World Order. In the 1940's and 1950's, the Illuminati began using Disney's Alice In Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz films as programming bases for their total mind-controlled slaves.9

"Disney is one of the best deceptions of the Illuminati," write Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler in Deeper Insights into the Illuminati Formula. "Disneyland has been an off hour site for Illuminati and satanic rituals for years." The authors continue:

According to a witness, the Illuminati Programmers got a big laugh out of using Disneyland as a major Illuminati base for criminal activity. Under the disguise of entertaining the world, they carried out money laundering, child slavery laundering, and mind-control. They nick-named Disneyland "the little syndicate of mind-control." 10

Those associated with Disney have reported coworkers and denizens using unusual hand gestures and coded names. Texe Mars, author of several books on the Illuminati, states in an interview in the Fall 2006 issue of Paranoia Magazine that the Illuminati practice "symbology, signs, handshakes, coded language, ritual magic, worship, [and] adoration of idols."

Related books

Illuminati

Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines illuminati as "persons who are or who claim to be unusually enlightened" and the Illuminati itself as "any of various groups claiming special religious enlightenment." 1 Terry Melanson begins "Illuminati Conspiracy Part One: A Precise Exegesis on the Available Evidence" for the Illuminati Conspiracy Archive noting that "in the literature that concerns the Illuminati relentless speculation abounds. No other secret society in recent history – with the exception of Freemasonry – has generated as much legend, hysteria, and disinformation."

In 1961 U.S. President John F. Kennedy warned America of secret societies in an address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association:

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.

For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence – on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.

Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed – and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment – the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution – not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants" – but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.

This means greater coverage and analysis of international news – for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security.3

Kennedy's speech came on the heels of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address warning that:

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.4

"The Illuminati have refined the art of deception far beyond what the common man has imagined. The very life & liberty of humanity requires the unmasking of their deceptions," warns Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler in The Illuminati Formula.5

The Illuminati use the Monarch style of conditioning or "programming" developed by the Nazis and refined by the American CIA MKULTRA programs detailed in the following chapter. "The basic component of the Monarch Program is the sophisticated manipulation of the child's mind to protect itself from extreme trauma by creating Multiple Personality Disorder," relates Fritz Springmeier as posted by the mindcontrolforums.com website article "Monarch Mind Control Programming." "Another basic component of the Monarch program is lots of electro shock." 6

Former CIA Mind Control Slave Cathy O'Brien with deprogrammer Mark Phillips describe in their 1995 book submitted for Congressional Record, Trance: Formation of America:

120,000-volt stun guns leave two indented prod marks or moles [3/4 to 2 inches apart]. A look into trash-magazine publisher Larry Flint's Hustler will show prod marks on the mind-controlled slaves he photographs, particularly on the throat, near the lips, and on the back.7

The mindcontrolforums.com article concludes:

The Monarch programming is also referred to as Marionette programming. A marionette is a puppet and nazi German psychologists were working hard at creating the perfect human puppets. The end result of all the hard work put in by German, Italian, American and British researchers was the creation of an almost fool-proof impossible to detect human mind-controlled slave.8

According to the 1998 article "Mind Control Slavery and the New World Order" by Uri Dowbenko at the www.mormon.citymax.com website, Dissociative Identidy Disorder (commonly referred to as Multiple Personalities):

involves the creation of personality "alters": alternative personalities or personality fragments which can be used for specific tasks – usually for illegal activities like delivering drugs or other black-market activities (mules), messages (couriers) or killings (assassins). These alters, or soul fragments, are segregated and compartmentalised within the victim's mind by the repeated use of stun guns, drugs and hypnosis, which isolates the memories of their experiences.

An alter can be accessed by anyone who knows the "codes" or "triggers". These triggers, which induce an altered or trance state in a programmed victim, can be anything including telephone tones, nursery rhymes, dialogue from certain movies or hand signals.9

Related books

MKULTRA

"Project MK-ULTRA, or MKULTRA, was the code name for a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence" beginning in the early 1950s, writes Wikipedia.1 The online encyclopedia lists additional cryptonyms relating to these so-called black projects:2

The George Washington University provides a staff memorandum for the members of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. It states in part:

MKULTRA was the subject of extensive internal, congressional, and outside investigations in the 1970s. In 1973, the CIA purposefully destroyed most of the MKULTRA files concerning its research and testing on human behavior. In 1977, the agency uncovered additional MKULTRA files in the budget and fiscal records that were not indexed under the name MKULTRA. These documents detailed over 150 subprojects that the CIA funded in this area.4

According to Uri Dowbenko's "Mind Control Slavery and the New World Order" article:

Captain John McCarthy, US Army Special Forces (Ret.), who ran CIA assassination teams out of Saigon during the Vietnam War, told his friend, [Las Angeles, California, Police Department] whistleblower Mike Ruppert, that "MKULTRA is a CIA acronym that officially stands for 'Manufacturing Killers Utilizing Lethal Tradecraft Requiring Assassinations'".5

John W. Whitehead begins an interview with Carol Rutz, whose A Nation Betrayed "is footnoted documentation of her personal involvement in mind control experiments beginning when she was four years old," by presenting the origins of MKULTRA and its daughter programs:

In 1953, terrified by rumors of Communist "brainwashing" of prisoners of war during the Korean War, then CIA Director Allen Dulles authorized MKULTRA – a program that quickly became notorious for unusual and inhumane testing that the CIA and U.S. military poured millions of dollars into. Most of the documents detailing day-to-day operations within MKULTRA were destroyed by the CIA in 1972. These included limitless LSD experiments on unknowing victims, as well as experiments with sensory deprivation, electro-shock, brain implants, hypnosis and various forms of torture.

Among those involved in MKULTRA workings were former Nazi scientists. Directly following the expatriation of Nazi scientists into the U.S. – under the guise of the newly created project MKULTRA, officially defined as "A CIA Program of Research in Behavioral Modification" – Project BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE were formed in the early 1950s. These served as the primary codenames for a massive mind-control campaign – a field many Nazi scientists were specialists in long before the onslaught of WWII.

All the subprograms of MKULTRA were justified by the CIA as a necessary means to an end – that is, to create dissociative symptoms and disorders, including full multiple personality disorder, for the creation of "Manchurian candidates," or super-spies to be used on enemies during the Cold War.6

Domestic Abuse

Repeated exposure to extreme negative input may occur in the home. "Battered person syndrome," a post-traumatic stress disorder, can be the result. Divorce Net writes:

According to Dr. Lenore E. Walker, the nation's most prominent expert on battered women, a woman must experience at least two complete battering cycles before she can be labeled a "battered woman". The cycle has three distinct phases. First is the tension-building phase, followed by the explosion or acute battering incident, culminating in a calm, loving respite – often referred to as the honeymoon phase.1, 2

According to Wikipedia:

The term "battered woman syndrome" was coined by American feminist and psychologist Lenore Walker. In 1978-1981 she interviewed 435 female victims of domestic violence. She concluded that the violence goes in cycles. Each cycle consists on 3 stages:

Tension building stage, when a victim suffers verbal abuse or minor physical violence, like slaps. At this stage, the victim may attempt to pacify the abuser. However, the victim's passivity may reinforce the abuser's violent tendencies.

Acute battering incident. At this stage, both perceived and real danger (of being killed or seriously injured) is maximal.

Loving contrition. After the abuser discharged his tension by battering the victim, his attitude changes. He may apologize for the incident and promise to change his behaviour in the future.3

Divorce Net also reports on studies that found four general characteristics of the syndrome: the victim believes that the violence is his/her fault, the victim has the inability to place the responsibility for the violence elsewhere, he/she fears for their life and/or children's lives, and the victim has an irrational belief that the abuser is omnipresent and omnisient. Wikipedia relates:

Walker used the Martin Seligman's theory of learned helplessness to explain why many battered women do not leave their abusers. In Seligman's experiments, rats repeatedly suffered electric shocks without being able to escape them. After this, they did not attempt to escape a shock even if they had such a possibility. According to Walker, females who are repeatedly battered produce similar psychological responses.4

Jeffrey L. Edleson examines a problem endemic to domestic violence in "Mothers and Children: Understanding the Links between Woman Battering and Child Abuse":

[Studies] suggest that in 32% to 53% of all families where women are being beaten their children are also the victims of abuse by the same perpetrator. A small but growing body of research also suggests that children who witness domestic violence, but who are themselves not physically abused, may suffer social and mental health problems as a result.5

Parent against parent can have devastating effects on a child as Wikipedia reports:

Stanley Clawar and Brynne Rivlin have claimed in Children Held Hostage: Dealing with Programmed and Brainwashed Children that many forms of mind control are used in parental alienation by one parent against the other parent using both parents' children as unwitting weapons. Parental alienation often forces children to choose sides and become allies against the other parent. Children caught in the middle of such conflicts suffer severe losses of love, respect and peace during their formative years. They also often lose their alienated parent forever. These consequences and a host of others follows them into adulthood by creating a chronic condition known as Parental Alienation Syndrome.6

Related books

Child Sexual Abuse

Approximately one quarter of U.S. children are sexually abused, and fewer than 10% of cases are reported to authorities, according to statistics provided by the Seattle/King County Sexual Assault Resource Center and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. According to Dr. N. Faulkner, "in 90% of the rapes of children less than 12 years old, the child knew the offender, according to police-recorded incident data." USA Today reports that "family members account for 33% to 50% of abuse against girls and 10% to 20% against boys."

Often the abuser will implant crazy ideas into the victim's head; maybe the creep dons a costume or other novel device; use of force is not unheard of; it is up to the imagination what will scare silence into their victims. Would not the fear of God be used by all the pedophile priests? The über-creepy NAMBLA even publishes instructions on how to lure children. And what kid online hasn't been approached by a predator?

Depending on their relationship to the children, molesters use a wide variety of tactics to lure children. A family member might feign love and affection; a teacher, member of the clergy, police officer, or baby-sitter might use his or her position of authority; an older friend or companion might utilize games or pornography; a stranger might try bribery, requests for assistance, or citing an emergency.

According to a Yahoo! News report, the FBI's Pete Gulotta notes that "the people who commit these crimes against children are bright people. Many of them are above-average intelligence, with more money than most, professionals. We've arrested elementary school principals, military officers, computer programmers, attorneys, accountants, even a Broadway producer."

With the invention of the Internet, predators can search for websites containing child pornography and troll for young victims in chat rooms. Some may even attempt to meet the child in person. In 2000, for example, Disney's Go.com executive Patrick Naughten admitted to traveling across state lines to meet a child for sex. The codeveloper of the Java programming language agreed to a plea deal to develop software to catch other creeps like himself.

In 2006, Department of Homeland Security press aide Brian J. Doyle "allegedly provided his government-issued office phone and cell phone numbers, showed off his department ID and may have used his official computer in communications with an undercover sheriff's detective who was posing as [a] 14-year-old girl," reports the website FOXNews.com. "Doyle sent the 'girl' 16 'hard core' pornographic images"  videos by other reports – "through the Internet and 'asked if she would engage in those kind of acts with him,'" Sheriff Grady Judd said in an interview reported by The Ledger Online.

Also in 2006, Florida House Representative Mark Foley was accused of "making sexual overtures to boys working as attendants in Congress," writes Stephanie Griffith for theage.com.au. Senior Capitol Hill aide Kirk Forham warned House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office more than three years before about Foley's inappropriate behaviour. The article continues:

Kirk Fordham, a close friend of Mr Foley, resigned on [4 October] as chief of staff for Tom Reynolds, a powerful Republican leader in the House of Representatives, to protect Mr Reynolds from being further implicated in charges of covering up Mr Foley's alleged predatory behaviour towards teenage boys.

While law enforcement attempts to catch predators before they can abuse, pedophile social workers, psychiatrists, police and judges take positions where they can intercept and cover-up accusations of abuse. In 1996, Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) Child Protective Services (CPS) social worker Harold "Harry" Pitcock admitted to having sex with children in his care.

Sigmund Freud tried to expose the extent of child sexual abuse, but his initial presentation brought peer reprisals. He retracted his assertion of a connection between "hysteria" and abuse, and controversy over his "seduction theory" has raged ever since.

As many as 70 percent of the victims of sexual assault do not experience visible injury. This does not mean, however, that the trauma associated with the assault is insignificant. Victims who have no obvious physical injuries may experience extensive trauma related to the guilt associated with not having the physical injuries to prove that they resisted and are not "at fault" for the assault perpetrated on them. Indeed, some of the most devastating effects on victims include guilt, shame, embarrassment, powerlessness, fear, anger, and a sense of betrayal [Kilpatrick, D, Edmonds, C, & Seymour, A (1992). Rape in America: A Report to the Nation. Charleston: National Victim Center and Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, Medical University of South Carolina, 4].

A typical reaction of someone who has been sexually assaulted is denial that the abuse occurred and a great desire to forget about the incident [Darke, J. L. (1990). Sexual Aggression: Achieving Power through Humiliation, in Handbook of Sexual Assault: Issues, Theories, and Treatment of the Offender, WL Marshall, DR Laws, and HE Barbaree (eds.). Plenum Press, New York, NY, 60].

Resistance to repressed (and suppressed) memories has manifested in the form of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF). Intelligence community specialists sit on the FMSF board and send controversial experts like Elizabeth Loftus to testify that recollections of childhood abuse are ficticious despite including in its own newsletter that "studies report that the average age of remembering childhood incest is between 29 and 49." In many regions, this is too late to take legal action.

Debunking 'false memory' myths in sexual abuse cases

While public debate about so-called false memories has been raging for years, increasing numbers of trial and appellate court decisions involving this issue are just now being issued. The typical defense strategy in these cases is to file pre-trial motions challenging the reliability, and hence admissibility, of expert testimony regarding recovered memories. Reliability issues are also raised in motions to dismiss and for summary judgment. Usually, the defense also seeks to offer its own "expert" testimony to counter the plaintiff's scientific evidence that the mind can avoid or repress traumatic information and then recall it years later. The plaintiff's best approach is to anticipate this defense strategy and take the first step by filing a motion to exclude the defendant's evidence. Plaintiffs should file this motion early to persuade the court that the defendant's assets should be attached because the claim has merit.

Related books

Janet Reno

In the 1980s, the "Miami Method" of aggressively handling child sexual abuse cases was developed by Florida Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno. In his article "Beat the Devil: Janet Reno's Coerced Confession" for The Nation, Alexander Cockburn describes the use of isolation, quasi-hypnosis, conditioned response, and kindred mind-bending techniques used to ensure damning testimony. Predictably, many of the convictions were overturned in appeals.

Despite Reno's witch hunts, she "was never interested in taking on and prosecuting illegal obscenity," according to FBI Agent William P. Kelly. One of the lead officers in the City of Miami Police Department's vice unit, Michael Berish, noted that "the majority of obscenity cases involved organized crime figures that were responsible for the interstate distribution of this material."

Later appointed by President Bill Clinton to the position of U.S. Attorney General – the nation's top cop – and within months of her promise to "protect our children from abuse," Janet Reno's Justice Department attempted to redefine the law "with the intent of legalizing a substantial portion of child pornography," writes Concerned Women for America. Although Reno was hailed by many as Clinton's star Cabinet member, James Lambert, in his article "Clinton, Reno give pornographers free ride," dares to refer to a 1997 Syracuse University report showing that obscenity prosecutions decreased 86% under the Clinton administration.

Abuse Rings

In 1996, The Seattle Times reported on the horrific abuses at the state's O.K. Boy's Ranch, described by residents as "a jungle," "where older boys beat and molested younger residents…[and] were subjected to physical and sexual abuse from…some staff members." This information came to light amidst revelations that the DSHS had relicensed the group home in 1989 despite knowing of abuse occurring there. The Seattle Times also reported that "[Kristy] Galt, Olympia area manager for the Division of Children and Family Services, was described in [a] State Patrol report…as 'oblivious to situations.' [DSHS auditor Art Cantrell] described her office as 'the worst-managed' office in the state."

As legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover denied the existence of organized crime – ie the Mafia – today the FBI denies organized child sexual abuse – ie ritual abuse. In March 2006 as this author was writing this paper, the FBI finally decided to comply with a 1990 Act of Congress demanding a public accounting of missing children.

Former U.S. Senator John DeCamp "exposes the elite web of crime, satanic cults, and child sexual abuse that reaches through the highest levels of power in our society" in his 1992 book (updated in 1996) The Franklin Cover-Up writes an Amazon.com reviewer who goes on to note that "it's interesting that former CIA director Bill Colby ambiguously acknowledged to the author that the scenario described is real, and not long thereafter Colby turned up dead under suspicious circumstances." A documentary was filmed entitled Conspiracy of Silence, but before it was to air on the Discovery Channel, unknown members of Congress ordered all copies be destroyed.

Forcible drugging is reported by ritual abuse victims in Remembering Satan by Lawrence Wright. The child is drugged, hypnotized, and traumatized writes former Illuminati programmer Svali in Breaking the Chain.

Elder Glenn L. Pace, Second Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, interviewed 60 people who had been ritually abused by church leaders, temple workers and members of the Tabernacle Choir, according to his 1990 memo on "Ritualistic Child Abuse" to the Strengthening Church Members Committee of the Mormon Church. Pace notes:

Ritualistic child abuse is the most hideous of all child abuse. The basic objective is premeditated – to systematically and methodically torture and terrorize children until they are forced to dissociate. [Pace doesn't] pretend to know how prevalent the problem is, can only assume that it is expanding geometrically and [is] horrified the numbers represented by the generation who are now children and teenagers.

Alex Constantine reports in his preview to the 1995 The Constantine Report at the www.mindcontrolforums.com website:

The treatment of mind controlled kids is a growing field, despite the call for public denial from the corporate press. Cult abuse of children, [Catherine Gould] wrote in The Journal of Psychohistory in the spring of 1995, "is considerable in scope and extremely grave in its consequences. Among 2,709 members of the American Psychological Association who responded to a poll, 2,292 cases of ritual abuse were reported. In 1992 alone, Childhelp USA logged 1,741 calls pertaining to ritual abuse, Monarch Resources of Los Angeles logged 5,000, Real Active Survivors tallied nearly 3,600, Justus Unlimited of Colorado received almost 7,000, and Looking Up Maine handled around 6,000."

The CIA brainwashes children to become amnesic spies, assassins and sex slaves. Children are used to cater to and compromise government officials and business leaders. Edwin Wilson began the CIA's widespread use of sex in the early 1950s when he acquired homosexual and pedophile rings from CIA asset, mafia lawyer, and Joseph McCarthy House Unamerican Activities Committee counsel Roy Cohn.

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Predator Priests

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.– The Bible; Matthew 18.6, Mark 9.42, Luke 17.2

The 2004 Los Angeles Times article "Vatican Aware of Abuse for Centuries, Study Says" notes a report "by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles [which] said Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other bishops didn't realize until 1985 that sexual abuse by clergy was "more than a matter of tragic but isolated incidents." The article continues:

But a North Carolina priest and two former monks who live in Southern California say they have scoured ancient Vatican records and forgotten Latin texts to show just the opposite: that the church has recognized the problem of abuse by priests for at least 1,700 years and has failed to address it successfully.

"The contention that the present scandal is isolated to this era is completely debunked by the Roman Catholic Church's own documents," concluded Father Thomas P. Doyle and former monks Richard Sipe and Patrick Wall in their 375-page report, "Canonical History of Clerical Sexual Abuse" 1 [later published as Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse].

After the Catholic Church abuse scandal began in 2001, Cardinal Bernard F. Law of the Boston diocese resigned in 2002 "amid a Boston Globe investigation reporting allegations of more than ninety clergy perpetrators under his authority. That number [grew to more than 200], according to BishopAccountability.org, an online archive on the church crisis.2 Pope John Paul II then promoted Cardinal Bernard Law to be a "pastor of the historic basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, with an estimated $12,000 monthly salary, according to the New York Times." It should be noted that in the Vatican City, "the age of consent is 12." 3

Marc Murphy, courier-journal.com

Pope John Paul II's successor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger then came under fire the week after becoming pontif:

Pope Benedict XVI faced claims [23 April 2005] he had 'obstructed justice' after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church's investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret. The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001. It asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood.

Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. The letter, 'concerning very grave sins', was sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that once presided over the Inquisition and was overseen by Ratzinger. Ratzinger's letter states that the church can claim jurisdiction in cases where abuse has been 'perpetrated with a minor by a cleric'.4

The Associated Press reported in 2002 that "until recently, lawsuits by alleged victims usually were settled quietly out of court, and police and prosecutors often were content to give church officials leeway to handle discipline internally, lawyers said." The article continues:

"In the past there was a minimum level of scrutiny to anything the church did because it was presumably acting in the best interests of people," said the Rev. Raymond C. O'Brien, a Catholic University law professor and a parish priest. "Prosecutions prior to the mid-80s were virtually unheard of," said Stephen Rubino, a New Jersey lawyer who has brought more than 200 lawsuits seeking damages from the church over alleged abuse. "Law enforcement kept their hands off. Nobody wanted to get involved with churchmen committing crimes," Rubino said. "The sexual abuse scandal now has changed everything," O'Brien said.5

Former monk Richard Sipe estimates that six percent of Catholic priests have sexually abused children.6 "In 2004-FEB, CNN was able to view a draft copy of a survey prepared by the church," according to the ReligiousTolerance.org website. "It reveals that 4,450 of the 110,000 Roman Catholic clergy (4%) who served between 1950 and 2002 have been accused of molesting minors. This has resulted in 11,000 individual abuse claims filed against Catholic clergy during that interval." 7

Thomas Fox, writing in the National Catholic Reporter, estimates that the average pedophile priest molests 285 victims.8 The 2002 Zogby International/Le Moyne Contemporary Catholic Trends Poll Report found that one in 11 American Catholics say they have "personal knowledge" of child sexual abuse by a priest.9

The AmericanCatholic.org website reports of the research study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice published in 2004 discovering that:

No action was taken against a priest in 10 percent of the allegations, and in 6 percent of the allegations the priests were reprimanded and returned to ministry. Other actions included suspending priests involved in 29 percent of the allegations and placing priests involved in 24 percent of the allegations on administrative leave.

[There was a] drop-off in reported incidents after 1985. Robert Bennett, National Review Board member, said that it was in part due to bishops becoming alarmed about the situation in the 1980s and '90s and starting to take preventive measures.10

"A Catholic order has agreed to pay $166 million to nearly 500 survivors of sexual abuse at Jesuit-run reservation boarding schools," reported the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in March 2011. "Attorneys for the abuse victims – nearly all Native Americans and Alaskan Natives abused at the mission schools in Washington and around the Northwest – described the settlement as the largest in U.S. history." The article continues:

In a statement, the attorneys said the Society of Jesus' Oregon Province and its insurer agreed to make the payment and issue a written apology to the victims, who were sexually and psychologically abused from the 1940s through the 1990s. The abuse was alleged to have taken place at Jesuit operated mission schools and boarding schools on Indian reservations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and Montana.11

In 2009, a nine year 2,600-page report found that "about 35,000 children and teenagers who were orphans, petty thieves, truants, unmarried mothers or from dysfunctional families were sent to Ireland's network of 250 Church-run industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s up until the early 1990s," reports Mail Online:

The report by Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse found 'a climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys'. It added: 'Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.'

The report found that molestation and rape were 'endemic' in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.
'In some schools a high level of ritualised beating was routine,' the report said. But officials in Ireland's Catholic Church shielded paedophile staff from arrest to protect their own reputations despite knowing they were serial attackers.12

According to an Associated Press release, The Kansas City Star reported in January 2000 that "Roman Catholic priests in the United States are dying from AIDS-related illnesses at a rate four times higher than the general population, and the cause is often concealed on their death certificates." 13 Further research by The Star "found that the AIDS-related death rate among priests 'exceeds earlier estimates.'" 14 Judy L. Thomas writes in her article "Catholic Priests Are Dying of AIDS, Often In Silence" for The Bible Study that "other statistics and experts suggest that those estimates are too conservative. [A.W. Richard Sipe] who has spent more than 30 years studying sexuality issues in the church, thinks that about 750 priests nationwide have died of such illnesses. That would translate into an AIDS-related death rate eight times that of the general population." 15The Kansas City Star also reported that "the Rev. John Keenan, who runs Trinity House, an outpatient clinic in Chicago for priests, said he believes most priests with AIDS contracted the disease through same-sex relations. He said he treated one priest who had infected eight other priests." 16

As explained by E.G. White in America in Prophecy, VICARIUS FILII DEI are the words enscribed on the Pope's miter. In Latin, as well as Greek and Hebron translations, summing together the letters which hold numeric value equals 666, referred to in The Bible at Revelation 13.18 as the number of the beast.17, i

Notes

i Other ancient authorities read six hundred and sixteen.
– Revelation 13.18, fn, The Bible, Revised Standard Version, (Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., 1980), p. 1080.

Related links

1 William Lobdell, "Vatican Aware of Abuse for Centuries, Study Says; Authors use church's own documents to make their case. Critics say money is the motive," Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2004, at (retrieved: 28 April 2011).

10 "The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States," John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2004, at http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/ (retrieved: 29 April 2011).

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Voting

"Ever since the presidential election of 2000 put the words 'hanging chad' into the lexicon, states are going high-tech," according to a WishTV.com news site article available in 2005. The switch to computerized systems is to eliminate the problems with older voting methods such as punch card ballots which can "be rigged, by selectively die-cutting so that some chads dislodge more easily than others," points out Bev Harris in "Embezzler Programmed Voting System" for the Scoop Independent News website.

"Computer programmers say software bugs, hackers or electrical failures could cause more than 50,000 touch-screen machines used in precincts nationwide to delete or alter votes," according to an Associated Press (AP) release "Con Job at Diebold Subsidiary" at the Wired.com website. Bob Fitrakis writes in his 2004 article "Black Box Voting" at the OnlineJournal.com news website:

The electronic voting industry is dominated by only a few corporations – Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and Sequoia. Diebold and ES&S combined count for an estimated 80 percent of U.S. black box electronic votes.

Johns Hopkins researchers at the Information Security Institute issued a report declaring that Diebold's electronic voting software contained "stunning flaws." The researchers concluded that vote totals could be altered at the voting machines and by remote access. Diebold vigorously refuted the Johns Hopkins report, claiming the researchers came to "a multitude of false conclusions."

CBS News quotes Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University in its "E-Voting: Is The Fix In?" report:

"We found all kinds of problems in the code," he said. "A computer scientist can look at program and immediately tell you if it was written by professional programmers who know how to do software engineering or if it was just put together by a bunch of hacks. And, upon looking at the source code for Diebold, it was pretty clear that this was a real amateur job."

"Omaha-based ES&S, and its Republican roots may be even stronger than Diebold's," writes Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman in their 2004 article "Diebold's Political Machine" article for the Mother Jones website which details egregious "Black Box" miscounted votes including U.S. "Vice President Al Gore getting minus 19,000" in one county. "Wherever Diebold and ES&S go, irregularities and historic Republican upsets follow," according to Fitrakis in "Black Box Voting."

"At least five convicted felons secured management positions" at a Diebold subsidiary reports the "Con Job" article. "'Mob ties, bribery, felony convictions, and threats of coercion are visible in the public record of the [Sequoia] election services company,' according to investigative journalist and filmmaker Daniel Hopsicker, and reported in Spotlight.com," writes Lynn Landes in a 2002 article for the CommonDreams.org News Center, "Elections In America - Assume Crooks Are In Control."

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See also

William J. Chambliss (Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Sociology Department at the George Washington University, and President of the American Society of Criminology (1988)), On the Take: From Petty Crooks to Presidents, Second Edition (Indiana: University Press, 1978, 1988).

Conclusion

Wikipedia reports:

A contemporary view of mind control sees it as an intensified and persistent use of well researched social psychology principles like compliance, conformity, persuasion, dissonance, reactance, framing or emotional manipulation. Authors Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad suggest that mind control is embedded in the very fabric of contemporary religious, political, and social power through the unquestioning reliance on false but ubiquitous authoritarian ideas.

While Mind Control has beneficial uses, coercive psychological systems are usually harmful to the target. Whether it is daily behavior such as ignoring someone or overly asserting oneself, actions taken as matter of course may affect other people to detriment. The casualties are the children who mimic these same behaviors in adulthood. It has been claimed that unless one takes an active roll in changing his or her behavior, one becomes just like their parent(s); and regression to the mean is commonplace when it comes to upbringing.

Many victims of neglect and abuse turn to dysfunctional relationships, drugs, crime, or worse; some without conscious knowledge of their mistreatment until decades later. They may even be diagnosed with some modern day form of "hysteria."

There is still widespread denial when it comes to accepting that Mind Control is being used against the youngest members of society. Mind Control is considered just another conspiracy theory by most people, as if brainwashing can't possibly happen to regular folk.

Meanwhile, the Secret Societies of predators that have existed for eons are networking like no other time in history via the Internet. Many of these offenders are otherwise "upstanding" members of the community, even holding positions of power. None would be suspect of any wrongdoing, at least of course until they're caught preying on victims.

Wikipedia concludes:

[While] mind control is a common feature in many conspiracy theories, as it provides a mechanism by which an alleged conspiracy could maintain control over innocent people, prevent knowledge of the conspiracy's actions and, in some cases, prevent the conspiracy theorist's intended audience from believing him; it is conceivable that the term might be used illegitimately and inappropriately, as a means to dismiss what are in fact substantial and well-evidenced accusations.

Unfortunately for those who dare mention being targets of Mind Control, society completely dismisses their accusations as nothing more than pure fantasy, delusion, or a product of some other psychological disorder. "Where such repair is possible, what often results is not the aquisition of fully normal status, but a transformation of self from someone with a particular blemish into someone with a record of having corrected a particular blemish," laments Erving Goffman in Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity.

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The Empire never ended

Who had built the prison – and why – he could not say. But he could discern one good thing: the prison lay under attack. An organization of Christians, not regular Christians such as those who attended church every Sunday and prayed, but secret Christians wearing light gray-colored robes, had started an assault on the prison, and with success. Everyone who had ever lived was literally surrounded by the iron walls of the prison; they were all inside it and none of them knew it – except for the gray-robed secret Christians.